To Have And Have Not

By the same author

IN OUR TIME

fiesta

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
THE TORRENTS OF SPRING
WINNER TAKE NOTHING
GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA
THE FIFTH COLUMN AND THE FIRST
FQRTY-NINE

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
SELECTED STORIES
the old man and the sea

A V Ws'A

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

TO HAVE

HAVE NOT

JONATHAN CAPE
THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE
LONDON

FIRST PUBLISHED BY JONATHAN CAPE OCTOBER 1937
SECOND IMPRESSION OCTOBER 1937
THIRD IMPRESSION OCTOBER 1937
RE-ISSUED IN THE HALF-CROWN FICTION SERIES I 94 O
RE-ISSUED IN THE TRAVELLERS’ LIBRARY 193®
RE-ISSUED IN CROWN 8 vO FORMAT 1954
REPRINTED 1955

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY BRADFORD AND DICKENS, LONDON
BOUND BY A. W. BAIN AND CO., LTD.

NOTE

In view of a recent tendency to identify characters
in fiction with real people, it seems proper to state
that there are no real people in this volume: both the
characters and their names are fictitious. If the
name of any living person has been used, the use
was purely accidental.

PART ONE

HARRY MORGAN

Spring

CHAPTER t

You know how it is there early in the morning in
Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls
of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by
with ice for the bars? Well, we came across the
square from the dock to the Pearl of San Francisco
Cafe to get coffee and there was only one beggar
awake in the square and he was getting a drink out
of the fountain. But when we got inside the cafe
and sat down, there were the three of them waiting
for us.

We sat down and one of them came over.

‘Well? 5 he said,

‘I can’t do it, 5 I told him. Td like to do it as a
favour. But 1 told you last night I couldn’t. 5

4 You can name your own price. 5

Tt isn’t that. I can’t do it. That’s all. 5

The two others had come over and they stood
there looking sad. They were nice-looking fellows
all right and I would have liked to have done them
the favour.

‘A thousand apiece,’ said the one who spoke good
English.

‘Don’t make me feel bad,’ I told him. T tell you
true I can’t do it.’

‘Afterwards, when things are changed, it would
mean a good deal to you.’

9 .

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘I know it. I’m all for you. But I can’t do it.’

Why not?’

e I make my living with the boat. If I lose her I
lose my living. 5

With the money you buy another boat.’

‘Not in jail.’

They must have thought I just needed to be
argued into it because the one kept on.

‘You would have three thousand dollars and it
could mean a great deal to you later. All this will
not last, you know.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I don’t care who is President here.
But I don’t carry anything to the States that can
talk.’ .

‘You mean we would talk?’ one of them who
hadn’t spoke said. He was angry.

‘I said anything that can talk.’

‘Do you think we are lenguas largas?’

‘No,’

‘Do you know what a lengua larga is?’

‘Yes. One with a long tongue.’

‘Do you know what we do with them?’

‘Don’t be tough with me,’ I said. ‘You
propositioned me. I didn’t offer you any¬
thing.’

Shut up, Pancho,’ the one who had done the
talking before said to the angry one.

‘He said we would talk,’ Pancho said.

Listen, I said. ‘I told you I didn’t carry any¬
thing that can talk. Sacked liquor can’t talk.

■ io ■

HARRY MORGAN —SPR I N G

Demijohns can’t talk. There’s other things that
can’t talk. Men can talk.’

^Can Chinamen talk?’ Pancho said, pretty nasty.

‘They can talk but I can’t understand them,’ I
told him.

‘So you won’t?’

‘It’s just like I told you last night. I can’t.’

‘But you won’t talk?’ Pancho said. '

The one thing that he hadn’t understood right
had made him nasty. I guess it was disappointment,
too. I didn’t even answer him.

‘You’re not a lengua larga, are you?’ he asked,
still nasty.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What’s that? A threat?’

Listen,’ I told him. ‘Don’t be so tough so early
in the morning. I’m sure you’ve cut plenty people’s
throats. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.’

‘So you’re sure I’ve cut people’s throats?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t give a damn. Can’t
you do business without getting angry?’

‘I am angry now,’ he said. T would like to kill
you.’

‘Oh, hell,’ I told him. ‘Don’t talk so much.’

‘Come on, Pancho,’ the first one said. Then, to
me, ‘I am very sorry. I wish you would take us.’

‘I’m sorry, too. But I can’t.’

The three of them started for the door, and I
watched them go. They were good-looking young
fellows, wore good clothes; none of them wore hats,

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

and they looked like they had plenty of money. They
talked plenty of money, anyway, and they spoke the
kind of English Cubans with money speak.

Two of them looked like brothers and the othei;
one, Pancho, was a little taller but the same sort of
looking kid. You know, slim, good clothes, and
shiny hair. I didn’t figure he was as mean as he
talked. I figured he was plenty nervous.

As they turned out of the door to the right, I saw
a closed car come across the square toward them.
The first thing a pane of glass went and the bullet
smashed into the row of bottles on the show-case
wall to the right. I heard the gun going and, bop, bop,
bop, there were bottles smashing all along the wall.

I jumped behind the bar on the left side and could
see looking over the edge. The car was stopped and
there were two fellows crouched down by it. One
had a Thompson gun and the other had a sawed-off
automatic shotgun. The one with the Thompson
gun was a nigger. The other had a chauffeur’s
white overall on.

One of the boys was spread out on the sidewalk,
face down, just outside the big window that was
smashed. The other two were behind one of the
Tropical beer ice wagons that was stopped in front
of the Cunard bar next door. One of the ice-wagon
horses was down in the harness, kicking, and the

other was plunging his head off

One of the boys shot from the rear corner of the
wagon and it ricocheted off the sidewalk. The nigger

12

HARRY MORGAN —SPRING

with the Tommy gun got his face almost into the
street and gave the back of the wagon a burst from
underneath and sure enough one came down, falling
toward the sidewalk with his head above the kerb.
He flopped there, putting his hands over his head,
and the chauffeur shot at him with the shotgun while
the nigger put in a fresh pan; but it was a long shot.
You could see the buckshot marks all over the side¬
walk like silver splatters.

The other fellow pulled the one who was hit back
by the legs to behind the wagon, and I saw the
nigger getting his face down on the paving to give
them another burst. Then I saw old Pancho come
around the corner of the wagon and step into the lee
of the horse that was still up. He stepped clear of the
horse, his face white as a dirty sheet, and got the
chauffeur with the big Luger he had; holding it in
both hands to keep it steady. He shot twice over the
nigger’s head, coming on, and once low.

He hit a tyre on the car because I saw dust blow¬
ing in a spurt on the street as the air came out, and
at ten feet the nigger shot him in the belly with the
Tommy gun, with what must have been the last
shot in it because I saw him throw it down, and old
Pancho sat down hard and went over forwards. He
was trying to come up, still holding on to the Luger,
only he couldn’t get his head up, when the nigger
took the shotgun that was lying against the wheel of
the car by the chauffeur and blew the side of his
head off. Some nigger.

*3

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I took a quick one out of the first bottle I saw open
and I couldn’t tell you yet what it was. The whole
thing made me feel pretty bad. I slipped along be¬
hind the bar and out through the back kitchen
and all the way out. I went clean around the out¬
side of the square and never even looked over to¬
ward the crowd there was coming fast in front of the
cafe and went in through the gate and out on to the
dock and got on board.

The fellow who had her chartered was on board
waiting. I told him what had happened.

‘Where’s Eddy?’ this fellow Johnson that had us
chartered asked me.

‘I never saw him after the shooting started.’

‘Do you suppose he was hit?’

‘Hell, no. I tell you the only shots that came in
the cafe were into the show-case. That was when the
car was coming behind them. That was when they
shot the first fellow right in front of the window.
They came at an angle like this . . .’

‘You seem awfully sure about it,’ he said.

‘I was watching,’I told him.

Then, as I looked up, I saw Eddy coming along
the dock looking taller and sloppier than ever. He
walked with his joints all slung wrong.

‘There he is.’

Eddy looked pretty bad . He never looked too good
early in the morning; but he looked pretty bad now.

Where were you?’ I asked him.

‘On the floor.’

14

HARRY MORGAN-—SPRING

‘Did you see it?’ Johnson asked him.

‘Don’t talk about it, Mr. Johnson,’ Eddy said to
him. ‘It makes me sick to even think about it. 5

‘You better have a drink , 5 Johnson told him.
Then he said to me, ‘Well, are we going out?’
‘That’s up to you.’

‘What sort of a day will it be?’

‘Just about like yesterday. Maybe better.’

‘Let’s get out, then.’

‘All right, as soon as the bait comes.’

We’d had this bird out three weeks fishing the
stream and I hadn’t seen any of his money yet except
one hundred dollars he gave me to pay the consul,
and clear, and get some grub, and put gas in her be¬
fore we came across. I was furnishing all the tackle
and he had her chartered at thirty-five dollars a day.
He slept at an hotel and came aboard every morning.
Eddy got me the charter so I had to carry him. I
was giving him four dollars a day.

‘I’ve got to put gas in her,’ I told Johnson.

‘All right.’

‘I’ll need some money for that.’

‘How much?’

‘It’s twenty-eight cents a gallon. I ought to put
in forty gallons anyway. That’s eleven-twenty.’

He got out fifteen dollars.

‘Do you want to put the rest on the beer and the
ice?’ I asked him.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Just put it down against

what I owe you.’

15

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I was thinking three weeks was a long time to let
him go, but if he was good for it what difference was
there? He should have paid every week anyway.
But I’ve let them run a month and got the money. It
was my fault but I was glad to see it run at first. It
was only the last few days he made me nervous but I
didn’t want to say anything for fear of getting him
plugged at me. If he was good for it, the longer he
went the better.

box^ aVC 3 b ° ttIe of beer? ’ he asked me, opening the
‘No, thanks.’

Just then this nigger we had getting bait comes

her W off he d ° Ck and 1 t0ld Eddy t0 gCt ready to cast

The nigger came on board with the bait and we
cast off and started out of the harbour, the nigger
fixing on a couple of mackerel; passing the hook
through their mouth, out the gills, slitting the side
and then putting the hook through the other side
Md out, tying the mouth shut on the wire leader
and tying the hook good so it couldn’t slip and so the
bait would troll smooth without spinning.

^ He’s areal black nigger, smart and gloomy, with
blue voodoo beads around his neck under his shirt

was sk^, and 1 T h! Uked t0 do on board

S S p wX he papra ' But he put » • ■*»

°“ a bait m **““• “PfrW John-

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

‘Yes, sir. 5

‘Why do you carry a nigger to do it? 5

‘When the big fish run you’ll see, 5 I told him.

‘What’s the idea? 5

'The nigger can do it faster than I can. 5

‘Can’t Eddy do it? 5

‘No, sir . 5

‘It seems an unnecessary expense to me.’ He’d
been giving the nigger a dollar a day and the nigger
had been on a rumba every night. I could see him
getting sleepy already.

‘He’s necessary,’ I said.

By then we had passed the smacks with their fish
cars anchored in front of Cabanas and the skiffs
anchored fishing for mutton fish on the rock bottom
by the Morro, and I headed her out where the gulf
made a dark line. Eddy put the two big teasers out
and the nigger had baits on three rods.

The stream was in almost to soundings and as we
came toward the edge you could see her running
nearly purple with regular whirlpools. There was a
light east breeze coming up and we put up plenty of
flying fish, those big ones with the black wings that
look like the picture of Lindbergh crossing the
Atlantic when they sail off.

Those big flying fish are the best sign there is. As
far as you could see, there was that faded yellow gulf-
weed in small patches that means the main stream is
well in and there were birds ahead working over a
school of little tuna. You could see them jumping;

B 17

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

just little ones weighing a couple of pounds apiece.
Tut out any time you want/ I told Johnson.

He put on his belt and his harness and put out the
big rod with the Hardy reel with six hundred yards
of thirty-six thread. I looked back and his bait was
trolling nice, just bouncing along on the swell, and
the two teasers were diving and jumping. We were
going just about the right speed and I headed her
into the stream.

‘Keep the rod butt in the socket on the chair/ I
told him. Then the rod won’t be as heavy. Keep
the drag off so you can slack to him when he hits. If
one ever hits with the drag on he’ll jerk you over¬
board.’

Every day I’d have to tell him the same thing,
but I didn’t mind that. One out of fifty parties you
get know how to fish. Then when they do know half
the time they’re goofy and want to use line that isn’t
strong enough to hold anything big.

fi How does the day look?’ he asked me.

Tt couldn’t be better/ I told him. It was a pretty
day all right.

I gave the nigger the wheel and told him to work
along the edge of the stream to the eastward and
went back to where Johnson was sitting watching his
bait bouncing along.

Want me to put out another rod?’ I asked him.

T don’t think so/ he said. ‘I want to hook, fight,
and land my fish myself,

‘Good/ I said. ‘Do you want Eddy to put it

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

out and hand it to you if one strikes so you can hook
him? 5

c No ? 5 he said. ‘I prefer to have only one rod out.’

‘All right. 5

The nigger was still taking her out and I looked
and saw he had seen a patch of flying fish burst out
ahead and up the stream a little. Looking back, I
could see Havana looking fine in the sun and a ship
just coming out of the harbour past the Morro.

I think you 5 re going to have a chance to fight one
to-day, Mr. Johnson, 5 I told him.

It’s about time/ he said. c How long have we
been out? 5

‘Three weeks to-day. 5

‘That 5 s a long time to fish. 5

They’re a funny fish/ I told him. They aren’t
here until they come. But when they come there’s
plenty of them. And they’ve always come. If they
don’t come now they’re never coining. The moon
is right. There’s a good stream and we’re going to
have a good breeze.’

There were some small ones when we first came. 5

Yes/ I said. ‘Like I told you. The small ones
thin out and stop before the big ones come.’

‘You party-boat captains always have the same
line. Either it’s too early or too late or the wind isn’t
right or the moon is wrong. But you take the money
just the same.’

‘Well/ I told him, ‘the hell of it is that it usually is
too early or too late and plenty of time the wind is

*9

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

wrong. Then when you get a day that’s perfect
you’re ashore without a party.’

‘But you think to-day’s a good day?’

‘Well,’ I told him, ‘I’ve had action enough for
me already to-day. But I’d like to bet you’re going
to have plenty.’

‘I hope so,’ he said.

We settled down to troll. Eddy went forward and
laid down. I was standing up watching for a tail to
show. Every once in a while the nigger would doze
off and I was watching him, too. I bet he had some
nights.

‘Would you mind getting me a bottle of beer,
captain? ’ Johnson as ked me.

No, sir, I said, and I dug down in the ice to get
him a cold one.

‘Won’t you have one?’ he asked.

No, sir,’I said. ‘I’ll wait till to-night.’

■ I opened the bottle and was reaching it toward
him when I saw this big brown buggar with a spear
on him longer than your arm burst head and
shoulders out of the water and smash at that
mackerel. He looked as big around as a saw log.

Slack it to him!’ I yelled.

‘He hasn’t got it,’Johnson said!

‘Hold it, then.’

i l ?? me U P fr° m deep down and missed it. I
Juiew he d turn and come for it again.

‘Get ready to turn it loose to him the minute he

grabs it.

20

HARRY M ORGAN-SPRING

Then I saw him coming from behind under water.
You could see his fins out wide like purple wings and
the purple stripes across the brown. He came on like
a submarine and his top fin came out and you could
see it slice the water. Then he came right behind the
bait and his spear came out too, sort of wagging,
clean out of water.

‘Let it go into his mouth/ I said. Johnson took

his hand off the reel spool and it started to whiz and
the old marlin turned and went down and I could. ^

see the whole length of him shine bright silver as *."T

turned broadside and headed off fast toward shore.

Tut on a little drag/ I said. "Not much. 5

He screwed down on the drag.

"Not too much/ I said. I could see the line slant
up. "Shut her down hard and sock him/ I said.
"You’ve got to sock him. He’s going to jump anyway/

Johnson screwed the drag down and came back
on the rod.

"Sock him!’ I told him. "Stick it into him. Hit
him half a dozen times/

He hit him pretty hard a couple of times more,
and then the rod bent double and the reel com¬
menced to screech and out he came, boom, in a long
straight jump, shining silver in the sun and making
a splash like throwing a horse off a cliff.

"Ease up on the drag/ I told him.

"He’s gone/ said Johnson.

"The hell he is/ I told him. "Ease up on the drag

quick/

B2-3 .<=fj

He nr

21

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

uld see the curve in the line and the next time
hped he was astern and headed out to sea.
he came out again and smashed the water
and I could see he was hooked in the side of
~~tmr-rnouth. The stripes showed clear on him. He
was a fine fish, bright silver now, barred with purple,
and as big around as a log.
t He s gone,. Johnson said. The line was slack.

Reel on him,’ I said. ‘He’s hooked good. Put
her ahead with all the machine!’ I yelled to the
mjger.

r then once, twice, he came out stiff as a post, the
whole, length of him jumping straight toward us,
throwing the water high each time he landed. The
me came taut and I saw he was headed inshore
again and I could see he was turning

t ,‘ No , w he>11 make his run,’ I said. ‘If he hooks up

plenty onine™ Kcq> y ° Ur drag Ught There ’ s

°u ld marlin beaded out to the nor’west like
all the big ones go, and brother, did he hook up'
He started jumpin g in those long lopes and every

£ e 1 h7™ t bC ^ t SpCCd b ° at in a sea ‘ went
atter him, keeping him on the quarter once I’d
made « he ton j had ^ wheeI ^ “

ofSuddrn'r l “? h ’ S f? g light and recuJt All

SSTiSM th ' *** -

22

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

He s gone, I told him. The fish was still jumping
and he went on jumping until he was out of sight.
He was a fine fish all right.

‘I can still feel him pull,’ Johnson said.

‘That’s the weight of the line.’

‘I can hardly reel it. Maybe he’s dead.’

Look at him,’ I said. ‘He’s still jumping.’ You
could see him out half a mile, still throwing spouts
of water.

I felt his drag. He had it screwed down tight.
You couldn t pull out any line. It had to break.

Didn’t I tell you to keep your drag light?’

‘But he kept taking out line.’

‘So what?’

‘So I tightened it.’

‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘If you don’t give them line
when they hook up like that they break it. There
isn t any line will hold them. When they want it
you’ve got to give it to them. You have to keep a
light drag. The market fishermen can’t hold them
tight when they do that even with a harpoon line.
What we have to do is to use the boat to chase them
so they don t take it all when they make their run.
After they make their run they’ll sound and you
can tighten up the drag and get it back.’

Then ifit hadn’t broken I would have caught him?’

‘You’d have had a chance.’

‘He couldn’t have kept that up, could he?’

‘He can do plenty of other things. It isn’t until
after he’s made his run that the fight starts.’

23

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Weil, let’s catch one,’ he said.

‘You have to reel that line in first,’ I told him.

We d hooked that fish and lost him without
waking Eddy up. Now old Eddy came back astern.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

Eddy was a good man on a boat once, before he
got to be a rummy, but he isn’t any good now.
I looked at him standing there tall and hollow¬
cheeked with his mouth loose and that white stuff
in the corners of his eyes an 1 his hair all faded in
the sun. I knew he woke up dead for a drink.

‘You’d better drink a bottle of beer,’ I told him.
He took one out of the box and drank it.

‘Well, Mr. Johnson,’ he said, ‘I guess I better
finish my nap. Much obliged for the beer, sir.’

‘ ome Eddy. The fish didn’t make any difference to

Well, we hooked another one around noon and
e jumped off. You could see the hook go thirty
feet m the air when he threw it. 7

( £ What did I do wrong then?* Johnson asked.
( Nothmg,’I said. ‘He just threw it.’

. <Mr ‘ Johnson,’ said Eddy, who’d waked up to
have another bottle of beer, ‘Mr. Johnson, you’re
just unlucky. Now maybe you’re lucky with
women. Mr. Johnson, what do you say we go out

to-night?’ Then he went back and’hid '^own
again.

About four o’clock when we’re coming back close
m to shore against the stream; it going like a mill

24

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

race, us with the sun at our backs; the biggest black
marlin I ever saw in my life hit Johnson’s bait.
We’d put out a feather squid and caught four of
those little tuna and the nigger put one on his hook
for bait. It trolled pretty heavy but it made a big
splash in the wake.

Johnson took the harness off the reel so he could
put the rod across his knees because his arms got
tired holding it in position all the- time. Because
his hands got tired holding the spool of the reel
against the drag of the big bait, he screwed the drag
down when I wasn’t looking. I never knew he had
it down. I didn’t like to see him hold the rod that
way but I hated to be crabbing at him all the time.
Besides, with the drag off, line would go out so
there wasn’t any danger. But it was a sloppy way
to fish.

I was at the wheel and was working the edge of
the stream opposite that old cement factory where
it makes deep so close in to shore and where it makes
a. sort of eddy where there is always lots of bait.
Then I saw a splash like a depth bomb and the
sword, and eye, and open lower-jaw and huge
purple-black head of a black marlin. The whole top
fin was up out of water looking as high as a full*
rigged ship, and the whole scythe tail was out as he
smashed at that tuna. The bill was as big around
as a baseball bat and slanted up, and as he grabbed
the bait he sliced the ocean wide open. He was solid
purplc-black* and he had an eye as big as a soup

. 2 S

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

bowl. He was huge. I bet he’d go a thousand pounds.

I yelled to Johnson to let him have line, but
before I could say a word, I saw Johnson rise up in
the air off the chair as though he was being der-
ricked, and him holding just for a second on to that
rod and the rod bending like a bow, and then the
butt caught him in the belly, and the whole works
went overboard.

He d. screwed the drag tight, and when the fish
struck, it lifted Johnson right out of the chair and he
couldn’t hold it. He’d had the butt under one leg
and the rod across his lap. If he’d had the harness
on it would have taken him along, too.

I cut out the engine and went back to the stern.
He was sitting there holding on to his belly where

the rod butt had hit him.

‘I guess that’s enough for to-day,’ I said.

What was it?’ he said to me.

‘Black marlin,’ I said.

‘How did it happen?’

‘You figure it out?’ I said. ‘The reel cost two
hundred and fifty dollars. It costs more now. The
rod cost me forty-five. There was a little under six
hundred yards of thirty-six thread.’

Just then Eddy slaps him on the back ‘Mr.
Johnson, he says,‘you’re just unlucky. You know
I never saw that happen before in my life.’

Shut up, you rummy,’I said to him.

1 tell you, Mr. Johnson,’ Eddy said, ‘that’s the
rarest occurrence I ever saw in my life.’

26

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

‘What would I do if I was hooked to a fish like
that?’ Johnson said.

‘That’s what you wanted to fight all by yourself/
I told him. I was plenty sore.

They re too big/ Johnson said. ‘Why, it would
iust be punishment.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘A fish like that would kill you.’

‘They catch them.’

‘People who know how to fish catch them. But
don’t think they don’t take punishment.’

‘I saw a picture of a girl who caught one.’

Sure, I said. ‘Still fishing. He swallowed the
bait and they pulled his stomach out and he came
to the top and died. I’m talking about trolling for
them when they’re hooked in the mouth.’

‘Well/ said Johnson, ‘they’re too big. If it isn’t
enjoyable, why do it?’

‘That’s right, Mr. Johnson,’ Eddy said. ‘If it
isn’t enjoyable, why do it? Listen, Mr. Johnson.
You hit the nail on the head there. If it isn’t enjoy¬
able — why do it?’

I was still shaky from seeing that fish and feeling
plenty sick about the tackle and I couldn’t listen to
them. I told the nigger to head her for the Morro.
I didn t say anything to them and there they sat,
Eddy in one of the chairs with a bottle of beer and
Johnson with another.

Captain,’ he said to me after a while, ‘could you
make me a highball?’

I made him one without saying anything, and
27

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

then I made myself a real one. I was thinking to
myself that this Johnson had fished fifteen days,
finally he hooks into a fish a fisherman would give
a year to tie into, he loses him, he loses my heavy
tackle, he makes a fool of himself and he sits there
perfectly content, drinking with a rummy.

When we got into the dock and the nigger was
standing there waiting, I said, ‘What about to¬
morrow?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Johnson said. ‘I’m about fed
up with this kind of fishing.’

‘You want to pay off the nigger?’

‘How much do I owe him?’"

A dollar. You can give him a tip if you want.’
bo Johnson gave the nigger a dollar and two
v-uban twenty-cent pieces.

What’s this for?’ the nigger asks me, showing the
coins. ■

‘A tip,’ I told him in Spanish. ‘You’re through
He gives you that.’

Don’t come to-morrow?’

No.’

k aiigger gets ki s ball of twine he used for tying
juts and his dark glasses, puts on his straw hat and
goes without saying good-bye. He was a nigger

‘in?™* th ° Ught much of an y of us. ^

I as£d\im. yOU Want t0 SCttle UP ’ J° hnson? ’

•We ca?setrf he — * S" mornin g/Johnson said,
we can settle up in the afternoon.’

28' ■'

HARRY MORGAN—SPRING

‘Do you know how many days there are?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘No. There’s sixteen with to-day and a day each
way makes eighteen. Then there’s the rod and reel
and the line from to-day.’

‘The tackle’s your risk.’

‘No, sir. Not w'hen you lose it that way.’

‘I’ve paid every day for the rent ofit. It’s your risk. ’

‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘If a fish broke it and it wasn’t
your fault, that would be something else. You lost
that whole outfit by carelessness.’

‘The fish pulled it out of my hands.’

‘Because you had the drag on and didn’t have the
rod in the socket.’

‘You have no business to charge for that.’

‘If you hired a car and ran it off a cliff, don’t you
think you’d have to pay for it?’

‘Not if I was in it,’ Johnson said.

‘That’s pretty good, Mr. Johnson,’ Eddy said.
‘You see it, don’t you, Cap? If he was in it he’d be
killed. So he wouldn’t have to pay. That’s a good
one.’

I didn’t pay any attention to the rummy. ‘You
owe two hundred and ninety-five dollars for that
rod and reel and line,’ I told Johnson.

‘Well, it’s not right,’ he said. ‘But if that’s the
way you feel about it why not split the difference?’

‘I can’t replace it for under three hundred and
sixty. I’m not charging you for the line. A fish like
that could get all your line and it not be your fault.

29

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

If there was anyone here but a rummy they’d tell
you how square I’m being with you. I know it
seems like a lot of money but it was a lot of money
when I bought the tackle, too. You can’t fish like
that without the best tackle you can buy.’

'Mr. Johnson, he says I’m a rummy. Maybe I am.
But I tell you he’s right. He’s right and he’s
reasonable,’ Eddy told him.

‘I don’t want to make any difficulties,’ Johnson
said finally. ‘I’ll pay for it, even though I don’t see
it. I hats eighteen days at thirty-five dollars and
two ninety-five extra.’

‘You gave me a hundred,’ I told him. ‘I’ll give
you a list of what I spent and I’ll deduct what tmub
there is left. What you bought for provisions going
over and back.’ b 8

‘That’s reasonable,’ Johnson said.

., Listen, Mr. Johnson,’ Eddy said. ‘If you knew
the way they usually charge a stranger you’d know
it was more than reasonable. Do you know what
is. It s exceptional. The Cap is treating you like
you were his own mother.’ 6 y

the I after°r 1 t n 0 n the ^ nk t?: morrow and come down in
moiW ThCn 1U gCt the boat da y aft er to-

‘No U ’ h“ § °^ ba = C r k n With US and Save the boat fa re.’
‘lA/ ’n b r d ,' 1 1 save time w tth the boat.’

Well,^ I said. ‘What about a drink?’

thereT’ ^ J ° hnSOn - <No hard feelings now, are

30

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

‘No, sir,’ I told him. So the three of us sat there
in the stem and drank a highball together.

The next day I worked around her all morning,
changing the oil in her base and one thin g and
another. At noon I went uptown and ate at a
Chink place where you get a good meal for forty
cents, and then I bought some things to take home
to my wife and our three girls. You know, perfume,
a couple of fans and three of those high combs.
When I finished I stopped in at Donovan’s and
had a beer and talked with the old man and then
walked back to the San Francisco docks, stopping
in at three or four places for a beer on the way.
I bought Frankie a couple at the Cunard bar and I
came on board feeling pretty good. When I came
on board I had just forty cents left. Frankie came
on board with me, and while we sat and waited for
Johnson I drank a couple of cold ones out of the
ice box with Frankie.

Eddy hadn’t shown up all night or all day but I
knew he would be around sooner or later, as soon as
nis credit ran out. Donovan told me he’d been in
there the night before a little while with Johnson,
and Eddy had been setting them up on credit. We
waited and I began to wonder about Johnson not
showing up. I’d left word at the dock for them to
tell him to go on board and wait for me but they
said he hadn’t come. Still, I figured he had been out
f 11 ^ probably didn’t get up till around noon.
The banks were open until three-thirty. We saw the

3 ‘

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

plane go out, and about five-thirty I was all over
feeling good and was getting plenty worried.

At six o’clock I sent Frankie up to the hotel to see
if Johnson was there. I still thought he might be out
on a time or he might be there at the hotel feeling
too bad to get up. I kept waiting and waiting until
it was late. But I was getting plenty worried because
he owed me eight hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Frankie was gone about a little over half an hour
When I saw him coming he was walking fast and
shaking his head.

‘Fie went on the plane,’ he said.

All right. There it was. The consulate was
closed. I had forty cents, and, anyhow, the plane
was m Miami by now. I couldn’t even send a wire
Some Mr. Johnson, all right. It was my fault.

1 should have known better.

Well, 5 I said to Frankie, c we might as well have

a cold one, Mr. Johnson bought them.’ There were
three bottles of Tropical left.

Frankie felt as bad as I did. I don’t know how he

nn U tE E Ut ^ jUSt ^ sla PP«g me

on the. back and shaking his head.

j° Sff 1 was broke. I’d lost five hundred

couldnV Pty dollars of the charter, and tackle I
uldn t replace for three hundred and fifty more

w^iIdT 6 f ’ tha I gan ^ that han S s a rorind the dock
wou d be pleased at that, I thought. It certainly

before T 1 ^ S TS GOnCl t S happy . And the da y
efore I turned down three thousand dollars to

32

HARRY MORGAN-SPR ING

land three aliens on the Keys. Anywhere, just to
get them out of the country.

All right, what was I going to do now? I couldn’t
bring in a load because you have to have money to
buy the booze and besides there’s no money in it
any more. The town is flooded with it and there’s
nobody to buy it. But I was damned if I was going
home broke and starve a summer in that town.
Besides I’ve got a family. The clearance was paid
when we came in. You usually pay the broker in
advance and he enters you and clears you. Hell,
I didn’t even have enough money to put in gas.
It was a hell of a note, all right. Some Mr. Johnson.

‘I’ve got to carry something, Frankie,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to make some money.’

‘I’ll see,’ said Frankie. He hangs around the
waterfront and does odd jobs and is pretty deaf
and drinks too much every night. But you never
saw a fellow more loyal nor with a better heart.
I’ve known him since I first started to run over
there. He used to help me load plenty of times.
Then when I quit handling stuff and went party¬
boating and broke out this sword-fishing in Cuba
I used to see him a lot around the dock and around
the cafe. He seems dumb and he usually smiles
instead of talking, but that’s because he’s deaf.

‘You carry anything?’ Frankie asked.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can’t choose now.’

‘Anything?’

‘Sure.’

c

33

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘I’ll see,’ Frankie said. ‘Where will you be?’

‘I’ll be at the Perla,’ I told him. ‘I have to eat.’

You can get a good meal at the Perla for twenty-
five cents. Everything on the menu is a dime except
soup, and that is a nickel. I walked as far as there
with Frankie, and I went in and he went on. Before
he went he shook me by the hand and clapped me
on the back again.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Me Frankie; much
politics. Much business. Much drinking. No
money. But big friend. Don’t worry.’

‘So long, Frankie,’ I said. ‘Don’t you worry
either, boy.’ 7

34

CHAPTER II

I WENT in the Perla and sat down at a table. They
had a new pane of glass in the window that had
been shot up and the show-case was all fixed up.
There were a lot of gallegos drinking at the bar,
and some eating. One table was playing dominoes
already. I had black bean soup and a beef stew
with boiled potatoes for fifteen cents. A bottle of
Hatuey beer brought it up to a quarter. When I
spoke to the waiter about the shooting he wouldn’t
say anything. They were all plenty scared.

b I. finished the meal and sat back and smoked a
cigarette and worried my head off Then I saw
Frankie coming in the door with someone behind
him. Yellow stuff, I thought to myself. So it’s
yellow stuff.

This is Mr. Sing, 5 Frankie said, and smiled.
He’d been pretty fast all right and he knew it.

‘How do you do?’ said Mr. Sing.

Mr. Sing was about the smoothest-looking thing
I d ever seen. He was a Chink all right, but he
talked like an Englishman and he was dressed in a
white suit with a silk shirt and black tie and one of
those hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar Panama hats.

‘You will have some coffee?’ he asked me.

Tf you do.’

Thank you/ said Mr. Sing. ‘We are quite alone

here?’

35

a

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Except for everybody in the cafe, 3 I told him.

‘That is all right, 3 Mr. Sing said. ‘You have
boat? 3

‘Thirty-eight feet, 3 I said. ‘Hundred horse
Kermath. 5

‘Ah, 3 said Mr. Sing. ‘I had imagined it was
something bigger. 3

‘It can carry two hundred and sixty-five cases
without being loaded. 3

‘Would you care to charter it to me? 3

‘On what terms? 3

‘You need not go. I will provide a captain and a
crew. 3

‘No, 3 1 said. ‘I go on her wherever she goes. 3

‘I see, 3 said Mr. Sing. ‘Would you mind leaving
us? 3 he said to Frankie. Frankie looked as interested
as ever and smiled at him.

‘He’s deaf, 3 I said. ‘He doesn’t understand much
English.’

T see,’ said Mr. Sing. ‘You speak Spanish. Tell
him to rejoin us later. 5

I motioned to Frankie with my thumb. He got up
and went over to the bar.

‘You don’t speak Spanish?’ I said.

# Oh, yes, 5 said Mr. Sing. e Now what are the
circumstances that would — that have made you
consider ..

Tm broke. 5

I see, said Mr. Sing. ‘Does the boat owe any
money? Can she be libelled? 5

36

HARRY M ORGAN-SPRING

'No. 5

Quite so , 5 Mr. Sing said. £ How many of my
unfortunate compatriots could your boat accom¬
modate ? 5

‘You mean carry ? 5

‘That’s it . 5

‘How far ? 5

‘A day’s voyage . 5

‘I don’t know , 5 I said. ‘She can take a dozen if
they didn’t have any baggage . 5

They would not have baggage. 5

‘Where do you want to carry them ? 5

Td leave that to you, 5 Mr. Sing said.

‘You mean where to land them? 5

‘You would embark them for the Tortugas where
a schooner would pick them up. 5

‘Listen , 5 I said. ‘There’s a lighthouse at the
Tortugas on Loggerhead Key with .a radio that
works both ways. 5

‘Quite, 5 said Mr. Sing. ‘It would certainly be
very silly to land them there. 5

‘Then what? 5 ,

# ‘I said you would embark them for there. That is
what their passage calls for. 5

‘Yes, 5 I said.

‘You would land them wherever your best judg¬
ment dictated. 5

‘Will the schooner come to Tortugas to get them ? 5

‘Of course not, 5 said Mr. Sing. ‘How silly. 5

‘How much are they worth a head? 5

37

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Fifty dollars,’ said Mr. Sing.

‘No.’

‘How would seventy-five do?’

‘What do you get a head?’

‘Oh, that’s quite beside the point. You see, there
are a great many facets, or you would say angles, to
my issuing tickets. It doesn’t stop there.’

Yes, I said. ‘And what I’m supposed to do
doesn’t have to be paid for, either. Eh?’
t ‘I see your point absolutely,’ said Mr. Sing.
‘Should we say a hundred dollars apiece?’

Listen,’ I said. ‘Do you know how long I would
go to jail if they pick me up on this?’

‘Ten years,’ said Mr. Sing. ‘Ten years at least
Jut there is no reason to go to jail, my dear Captain
You run only one risk - when you load your
passengers. Everything else is left to your dis¬
‘And if they come back on your hands?’

That’s quite simple. I would accuse you to them
° 1 betrayed me. I will make a partial refund

and ship them out again. They realize, of course,
tnat it is a difficult voyage* 3
‘What about me?’

I suppose I should send some word to the
consulate.’

‘I see.’

dotes - - - *> *

‘When would I get the money?’

38

HARRY MORGAN —SPRING

Two hundred when, you agree "and a thousanc
when you load. 5

‘Suppose I went off with the two hundred? 5

‘I could do nothing, of course, 5 he smiled. ‘Bui
I know you wouldn’t do such a thing, Captain. 5

‘Have you got the two hundred with you? 5

‘Of course. 5

‘Put it under the plate. 5 He did.

‘All right/ I said. Til clear in the morning and
pull out at dark. Now, where do we load? 5

‘How would Bacuranao be? 5

‘All right. Have you got it fixed? 5

‘Of course. 5

# "Now, about the loading/ I said. ‘You show two
lights, one above the other, at the point. I’ll come
in when I see them. You come out in a boat and
load from the boat. You come yourself and you bring
the money. I won’t take one on board until I have it. 5

‘No/ he said; ‘one-half when you start to load
and the other when you are finished. 5

‘All right/ I said. ‘That’s reasonable. 5

‘So everything is understood? 5

‘I guess so/ I said. ‘There’s no baggage and no
arms. No guns, knives, or razors; nothing. I have
to know about that. 5

‘Captain/ said Mr. Sing, ‘have you no trust in
me? Don’t you see our interests are identical? 5

‘You’ll make sure? 5

‘Please do not embarrass me/ he said. ‘Do you

not see how our interests coincide? 5

39

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘All right,’ I told him. ‘What time will you be
there?’

‘Before midnight.’

‘AH right,’ I said. ‘I guess that’s all.’

‘How do you want the money?’

‘In hundreds is all right.’

He stood up and I watched him go out. Frankie
smiled at him as he went. Mr. Sing didn’t look at
him. He was a smooth-looking Chink all right.
Some Chink.

Frankie came over to the table. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Where did you know Mr. Sing?’

‘He ships Chinamen,’ Frankie said. ‘Big business.’
‘How long you know him?’

‘He’s here about two years,’ Frankie said.
‘Another one ship them before him. Somebody kill
him.’

‘Somebody will kill Mr. Sing, too.’

‘Sure,’ said Frankie. ‘Why not? Plenty big
business.’

‘Some business,’ I said.

Big business,’ said Frankie. ‘Ship Chinamen
never come back. Other Chinamen write letters
say everything fine.’

‘Wonderful,’ I said.

_ This kind of Chinamen no understand write
Chinamen can write all rich. Eat nothing. Live on
rice. Hundred thousand Chinamen here. Only
three Chinese women.’

‘Why?’

4°

HARRY MORGAN—SPRING

‘Government no let.’

‘Hell of a situation,’ I said.

‘You do business him?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Good business,’ said Frankie. ‘Better t han
politics. Much money. Plenty big business.’

‘Have a bottle of beer,’ I told him.

‘You not worry any more?’

Hell, no,’ I said. ‘Plenty big business. Much
obliged.’

‘Good,’ said Frankie, and patted me on the back.
Make me happier than nothing. All I want is you
happy. Chinamen good business, eh?’

‘Wonderful.’

‘Make me happy,’ said Frankie. I saw he was
about ready to cry because he was so pleased every¬
thing was all right, so I patted him on the back.
Some Frankie.

First thing in the morning I got hold of the
broker and told him to clear us. He wanted the
crew list and I told him nobody.

‘You’re going to cross alone, Captain?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’s become of your mate?’

‘He’s on a drunk,’ I told him.

‘It’s very dangerous to go alone.’

‘It’s only ninety miles,’ I said. ‘Do you think
having a rummy on board makes any difference?’

I ran her over to the Standard Oil dock across the
harbour and filled up both the tanks. She held

41

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

nearly two hundred gallons when I had her full.
I hated to buy it at twenty-eight cents a gallon but I

uian t know where we might go.

Ever since I’d seen the Chink and taken the

rT C l I d , b T ee ? worryin S about the business.
I don t think I slept all night. I brought her back

to the San Francisco dock, and there was Eddv
waiting on the dock for me. '

‘Hello, Harry,’ he said to me and waved, r threw
him the stern line and he made her fast, and then
came aboard; longer, blearier, drunker than ever.

I didn t say anything to him.

‘What do you think about that fellow Johnson
going off like that, Harry?’ he asked me. ‘What do

you know about that?’ °

0 ? e " e> ’ I c . t °! d him - <You ’ re poison to me.’

‘rvf h ff’ Jf t ,V eel as bad about 14 as you do?’
Get off of her, I told him.

w ba ’ k in - he chair and stretched b -

‘WeP T m 1 We - re , g0m S across to-day,’ he said.

■YrtSZ ‘ any rae to s,ay around -'

^No? Get off her. 5
Oh, take it easy. 5

J in the face and he stood up and then

chmbed up on to the dock. u U P and then

he said OUldn,t d ° 4 th “ g Kke that t0 you > Harry,’

42

HARRY MORGAN —SPR IN G

‘You’re goddamn right you wouldn’t,’ I told
him. ‘I’m not going to carry you. That’s all.’

Well, what did you have to hit me for?’

‘So you’d believe it.’

What do you want me to do? Stay here and
starve?’

‘Starve, hell,’ I said. ‘You can get back on the
ferry. You can work your way back.’

‘You aren’t treating me square,’ he said.

‘Who did you ever treat square, you rummy?’
I told him. ‘You’d double-cross your own
mother.’

That was true, too. But I felt bad about hitting
him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk.
But I wouldn t carry him the way things were now;
not even if I wanted to.

He stai ted to walk off down the dock looking
longer than a day without breakfast. Then he
turned and came back.

‘How’s to let me take a couple of dollars, Harry?’

I gave him a five-dollar bill of the Chink’s.

‘I always knew you were my pal, Harry, why
don’t you carry me?’

‘You’re bad luck.’

‘You’re just plugged,’ he said. ‘Never mind, old
pal. You’ll be glad to see me yet.’

Now he had money he went off a good deal
faster, but I tell you it was poison to see him walk,
even. He walked just like his joints were back¬
wards.

43

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I went up to the Perla and met the broker and he
gave me the papers and I bought him a drink. Then
I had lunch and Frankie came in.

‘Fellow gave me this for you,’ he said and handed
me a rolled-up sort of tube wrapped in paper and
tied with a piece of red string, ft looked like a
photograph when I unwrapped it, and I unrolled it
thinking it was maybe a picture someone around
the dock had taken of the boat.

All right. It was a close-up picture of the head
and chest of a dead nigger with his throat cut clear
across from ear to ear and then stitched up neat
and a card on his chest saying in Spanish: ‘This is
wiiat we do to lenguas largas. 5
^Who gave it to you?’ I asked Frankie.

P° mt ed out a Spanish boy that works around
the docks who is just about gone with the con. This
Jcid was standing at the lunch counter.

Ask him to come over . 5

e-aveTt-mh Cam ^ ovei ,' sa *d two young fellows

lh^ v bm ab ° ut L eleven o’clock. They asked him

Shtefor me a Th ^ Then he S aW ** *>
anHirf Theygave him a dollar to see that I

S fn ;• • hey were wel1 dressed, he said.

Politics,’ Frankie said.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said.

th»X"&ls g o, . ice you were meetine

‘Oh, yes.’ & *

Bad politics, Frankie said. ‘Good thing you go.*

44

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

‘Did they leave any message?’ I asked the Spanish
boy.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just to give you that.’

‘I’m going to leave now,’ I said to Frankie.

‘Bad politics,’ Frankie said. ‘Very bad politics.’

I had all the papers in a bunch that the broker
had given me and I paid the bill and walked out of
that cafe and across the square and through the gate,
and I was plenty glad to come through the ware¬
house and get out on the dock. Those kids had me
spooked all right. They were just dumb enough to
think I’d tipped somebody off about that other lot.
Those kids were like Pancho. When they were
scared they got excited, and when they got excited
they wanted to kill somebody.

I got on board and warmed up the engine.
Frankie stood on the dock watching. He was
smiling that funny deaf smile. I went back to him.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Don’t you get in any trouble
about this.’

He couldn’t hear me. I had to yell it at him.

‘Me good politics,’ Frankie said. He cast her off.

45

CHAPTER III

I waved to Frankie, who’d thrown the bowline on
board, and I headed her out of the slip and dropped
down the channel with her. A British freighter was
going out and I ran along beside her and passed
her. She was loaded deep with sugar and her plates
were rusty. A limey in an old blue sweater looked
down at me from her stern as I went by her. I went
out the harbour and past the Morro and put her
on the course for Key West; due north. I left the
wheel and went forward and coiled up the bowline

. and tben ^ me back and held her on her course
spreading Kavana out astern, and then dropping it
off behind us as we brought the mountains up.

1 dropped the Morro out of sight after a while
and then theNational Hotel and finally I could
J ®, See the dome of *e Capitol. There wasn’t
fished and r tf COmpared t0 the last day we had

count s ^ T TI a Hght breeze ' Is awa

thev werl * r eaded L in toward Hava na and

the^urrent w™ 1 ^^ 0111 the wcstward . so I knew
me current was light.

waL’rantV^ 1011 and . km ed the motor. There
When iSdfJ f n W f^ g gaS ' Fd let her

the Morrn ^ ? J pkk Up the hght of

Coiimar and «t S ^ nk j d up t0 ° Par > the lights of
J mar, and steer m and run along to Bacuranao.

46 .

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

I figured the way the current looked she would
drift the twelve miles up to Bacuranao by dark and
I’d see the lights of Baracoa.

Well, I killed the engine and climbed up forward

to have a look around. All there was to see was the
two smacks off to the westward headed in, and way
back the dome oPthe Capitol standing up white out
of the edge of the sea. There was some gulfweed on
the stream and a few birds working, but not many.
I sat up there awhile on top of the house and
watched, but the only fish I saw were those little
brown ones that use around the gulfweed. Brother,
don’t let anybody tell you there isn’t plenty of
water between Havana and Key West. I was
just on the edge of it.

After a while I went down into the cockpit
again, and there was Eddy.

c What’s the matter? What’s the matter with the
engine?’

tf She broke down.’

‘Why haven’t you got the hatch up?’

‘Oh, hell!’ I said.

Do you know what he’d done? He’d come back
again and slipped the forward hatch and gone down
into the cabin and gone to sleep. He had two quarts
with him. He’d gone into the first bodega he’d seen
and bought it and come aboard. When I started out
he woke up and went back to sleep again. When I
stopped her out in the gulf and she began to roll
a little with the swell it woke him up.

47

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I knew you’d carry me, Harry,’ he said.

Carry you to hell,’ I said. ‘You aren’t even on
the crew list. I’ve got a good mind to make you
jump overboard now.’ you

‘You’re an old joker, Harry,’ he said. ‘Us

trouble ’ ° Ught t0 ^ t0gether when we’re in

‘You,’ I said, ‘with your mouth. Who’s going- to
trust your mouth when you’re hot?’ & *

‘I’m a good man, Harry. You put me to the test

and see what a good man 1 am/

‘Get me the two quarts,’ I told him. I was

thinking of something else.

He brought them out and I took a drink from the
open one and put them forward by the wheel
He stood there and I looked at him. I was so/v
for him and for what I knew I’d have to do Sell
1 ^ ^ im , when he wa s a good man.

What s the matter with her, Harry?’

She’s all right.’

‘What’s the matter, then? What are you looking
at me like that for?’ y loosing

^Brother,’ 1 told him, and I was sorry for him

you re m plenty of trouble.’ y or nun,

‘What do you mean, Harry?’

figiedout 1 ^:" yet ’’ 1 Sai4 haVen ’‘ « »U

Lit”;; t 1

talk to him TU T , w ll > 11 was hard to
• Then I went below and got out the
48

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

pump-gun and the Winchester 30-30 that I always
had below in the cabin and hung them up in their
cases from the top of the house where we hung the
rods usually, right over the wheel where I could
reach them. I keep them in those full-length,
clipped sheep’s wool cases with the wool inside
soaked in oil. That’s the only way you can keep
them from rusting on a boat.

I loosened up the pump and worked her a few
times, and then filled her up and pumped one
into the barrel. I put a shell in the chamber of the
Winchester and filled up the magazine. I got out
the Smith and Wesson thirty-eight special I had
when I was on the police force up in Miami from
under the mattress and cleaned and oiled it and
filled it up and put it on my belt.

4 What’s the matter?’ Eddy said. 6 What the hell’s
the matter?’

"Nothing,’ I told him.

"What’s all the damn guns for?’

"I always carry them on board,’ I said. "To shoot
birds that bother the baits or to shoot sharks, or for
cruising along the Keys.’

"What’s the matter, damn it?’ said Eddy. "What’s
the matter?’

"Nothing,’ I told him. I sat there with the old
thirty-eight flopping against my leg when she rolled,
and I looked at him. I thought, there’s no sense to
do it now. I’m going to need him now.

"We’re going to do a little job,’ I said. "In at
’ n 49

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

B acurana°. I’ll tell you what to do when it’s time ’
I didn t want to tell him too far ahead bccausehc

^ S °

you on anything.’ y m Wldl

didttyattt 1 ’ ““ “ d Shaty ’ “ d 1

askedme ^7'-^ y ° U give me J ust one?’ he
asked me I don t want to get the shakes.’

get dark T** We S&t and Waited for it to

Llf k ‘ Jt j a fine sunset and Aere was a nice

iSrteTthe ^ when * e sun S ot Pretty well down
land d ^ gme and headed her in slow toward

50

CHAPTER IV

We lay offshore about a mile in the dark. The
current had freshened up, with the sun down, and I
noticed it running in. I could see the Morro. light
way down to the westward and the glow of Havana,
and the lights opposite us w’ere Rincon and Baracoa.

I headed her up against the current until I was past
Bacuranao and nearly to Cojimar. Then I let her
drift down. It was plenty dark but I could tell good
where we were. I had all the lights out.

‘What’s it going to be, Harry?’ Eddy asked me.
He was beginning to be spooked again.

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me worried.’
He was pretty close to the shakes and when he
came near me he had a breath like a buzzard.

‘What time is it?’

‘I’ll go down and see,’ he said. He came back up
and said it was half-past nine.

‘Are you hungry?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You know I couldn’t eat, Harry.’

‘All right,’ I told him. ‘You can have one.’

After he had it I asked him how he felt. He said
he felt fine.

‘I’m going to give you a couple more in a little
while,’ I told him. ‘I know you haven’t got any

5i

TO HA V E A X D

" • T " H A V E X O T
cojones unless voiTve mt mm. i T

teaid. So you'd h ( J r s""." s "'•

Tell me whaf.s up,’ said Eddv.

Listen, I said, talking to him in ( j„. i. .
going to Bacuranao and jnVfc liD , ,u 'h- ‘We’re

You take the wheel when 1 tell v ■ , U ' Vc Chinks.
«ril you to. Well take i md d “ w hatl

and we’ll lock them Mow' (,,n, t,l r ”? bowl

have one of th° sc now ?> d ' lhri 7> can I

No,’ I said. ‘I wan t ,

want you usc ie ss g nt >on n,m-l>rave. r don’t

a good man, Harry. You'll ,

Somg to bring those twdvc 0 ,.^ !?'• °" c ° hink «

f e some money at the start uu* S f om ^ to give"
board he’s going to give Inc ? 1CyVc aJi on

When you see him start ti l T morr mo ™Y-

second time you nut her-.t °j hailC m<: mor *cy the

head her out to sea Don’t^ ^ hooJc her U P and
to what happens. You keen hlr” Pa> ’ any an <mtion

wteha ppens . Do ; U u l ” P dcSS? <,m n ”

Cj£* „ -

coming through the hatch ° U , t of t!lr c,1 bin or
wa y> you take that mmo? *1 ?° M imd und <*
as fast as they come^u/f> and , hlow ‘hum back
pump-gu^p 5 * 0 y otl know how to me

52

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

‘No. But you can show me.’

‘You’d never remember. Do you know how to
use the Winchester?’

‘Just pump the lever and shoot it.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Only don’t shoot any holes
in the hull.’

‘You’d better give me that other drink,’ Eddy
said.

‘AH right. I’ll give you a little one.’

I gave him a real one. I knew they wouldn’t
make him drunk now; not pouring them into all
that fear. But each one would work for a little
while. After he drank this Eddy said, just as though
he was happy, ‘So we’re going to run Chinks.
Well, by God, I always said I’d run Chinamen if I
was ever broke’.

‘But you never got broke before, eh?’ I said to
him. He was funny all right.

I gave him three more drinks to keep him brave
before it was half-past ten. It was funny watching
him and it kept me from thinking about it myself.
I hadn’t figured on all this wait. I’d planned to
leave after dark, run out, just out of the glare, and
coast along to Cojimar.

At a little before eleven I saw the two lights show
on the point. I waited a little while and then I took
her in slow. Bacuranao is a cove where there used
to be a big dock for loading sand. There is a little
river that comes in when the rains open the bar
across the mouth. The northers, in the winter, pile

53

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

the sand up and close it. They used to go in with
schooners and load guavas from the river and there
used-to be a town. But the hurricane took it and
it is all gone now except one house that some
gallegos built out of the shacks the hurricane blew
down and that they use for a clubhouse on Sundays
when they come out to swim and picnic from
xiavana. There is one other house where the dele
gate lives but it is back from the beach.

Each little place like that all down the coast has
a government delegate, but I figured the Chink
must use his own boat and have him fixed. As we

r n 1 T 1 ? Sm f H the sea §ra P e and that sweet
smell from the brush you get off the land.

( Get up forward, 5 I said to Eddy.

<t 1 Y ° U rf n>t anythin £ on that side, 5 he said.
Ihe reef s on the other side as you go in. 5 You see,

iie^d been a good man once.

Watch her, 5 I said, and I took her in to where I
knew they could see us. With no surf they could

knnL’ he e T n u' 1 ? dn5t want to wait around, not
th n S .whether they saw us or not, so I flashed
the running lights on once, just the green and red

£ d rlT,T ff ', V 1 * umcd “caS

eneine lay ' there ’ J ust outside, with the

that cloie in kmg ‘ Ther * WaS quite a little swell

I^ZZ^ k hm/ 1 said to and 1 8*vc
‘Do you cock it first with your thumb? 5 he whis-

54

HARRY MORGAN—SPRING

pered to me. He was sitting at the wheel now, and
I had reached up and had both the cases open and
the butts pulled out about six inches.

‘That’s right.’

‘Oh, boy,’ he said.

11 certainly was wonderful what a drink would do
to him and how quick.

We lay there and I could see a light from the
delegate’s house back through the brush. I saw the
two lights on the point go down, and one o. them
moving off around the point. They must have
blown the other one out.

Then, in a little while, coming out of the cove, I
see a boat come toward us with a man sculling.
I could tell by the way he swung back and forth.
I knew he had a big oar. I was pretty pleased.
If they were sculling that meant one man.

They came alongside.

‘Good evening, Captain,’ said Mr. Sing.

‘Come astern and put her broadside,’ I said to
him.

He said something to the kid who was sculling
but he couldn’t scull backwards, so I took hold
of the gunwale and passed her astern. There were
eight men in the boat. The six Chinks, Mr. Sing,
and the ldd sculling. While I was pulling her astern
I was waiting for something to hit me on top of the
head but nothing did. I straightened up and let
Mr. Sing hold on to the stem.

‘Let’s see what it looks like,’ I said.

55

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

He handed it to me and I took the roll of it up to
where Eddy was at the wheel and put on the bin¬
nacle light. I looked at it carefully. It looked all

Smbhn^ 6 and 1 tUmed ° ff thC light ‘ EdcJ y was

rh ?rj° mS f 0ae ’ 1 said ' 1 saw him reach for
the bottle and tip it up.

I went back to the stern.

All right,’ I said. ‘Let six come on board.’

. •T', 8 ™? and the , Cuban that sculled were having
^ ii i° dmg th eir hoat from knocking in what little
swell there was. I heard Mr. Sing say somethin? in
Chink and all the Chinks in the bo.tstlnSZ
climb on to the stem.

One at a time/ I said.

anShefsIx^Sfo^ and then 0ne after

anouier six Chinks came over the st-em t-k

were all lengths and sizes. tfte stern. They
‘Show they forward,’ I said to Eddy

I knef By °° d

•S l sW ^Eddy^ Wh “ * hey ^ a " “■

lt/uZtt <!xothcrs ’' saiiMr ^-

K dU^. them dear “ d ^ ^ Mm started

yout e £™; h Ed t/ You ,ay off ^

O.K., chief,’ said Eddy.

HARRY MORGAN—SPRING

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘This is what I like to do,’ said Eddy. ‘You say
you just pull it backward with your thumb?’

‘You lousy rummy,’ I told him. ‘Give me a drink
out of that.’

‘All gone,’ said Eddy. ‘Sorry, chief.’

‘Listen. What you have to do now is watch when
'he hands me the money and put her ahead.’

‘O.K., chief,’ said Eddy.

I reached up and took the other bottle and got the
corkscrew and drew the cork. I took a good drink
and went back to the stem, putting the cork in
tight and laying the bottle behind two wicker iues
full of water.

‘Here comes Mr. Sing,’ I said to Eddy.

Wes, sir,’ said Eddy.

The boat came out sculling toward us.

He brought her astern and I let them do the
holding on. Mr. Sing had hold of the roller we had
across the stern to slide a big fish aboard.

‘Let them come aboard,’ I said, ‘one at a time.’

Six more assorted Chinks came on board over the
stem.

‘Open up and show them forward,’ I told Eddy.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Eddy.

‘Lock the cabin.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I saw he was at the wheel.

‘All right, Mr. Sing,’ I said. ‘Let’s see the rest
of it.’

57

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

He put his hand in his pocket and reached the
money out toward me. I reached for it and grabbed
his wrist with the money in his hand, and as he came
forward on the stern I grabbed his throat with the
other hand. I felt her start and then churn ahead as

but r°° ke w UP an , d r ^' as pIent y bus y wit h Mr. Sing
but I could see the Cuban standing in the stern If

the boat holding the sculling oar as we pulled awav

from her through all the flopping and bouncTS

it

glasses?:

true, his loose arm flailing But ri j,- c " Sh ’

£ S b Si?

Sr teA »»■* ^

** “

, 1 Picked up the money off the cocknit fl™ ,
toot » up and put „„ dJLna/e

58

HARRY M O R G AN —S PR I NG

it. Then I took the wheel and told Eddy to look
under the stern for some pieces of iron that I used
for anchoring whenever we fished bottom-fishing on
patches or rocky bottom where you wouldn’t want
to risk an anchor.

‘I can’t find anything,’ he said. He was scared
being down there by Mr. Sing.

‘Take the wheel,’ I said. ‘Keep her out.’

There was a certain amount of moving around
going on below but I wasn’t spooked about them.

I found a couple of pieces of what I wanted, iron
from the old coaling dock at Tortugas, and I took
some snapper-line and made a couple of good big
pieces fast to Mr. Sing’s ankles. Then when we were
about two miles offshore, I slid him over. He slid
over smooth off the roller. I never even looked in
his pockets. I didn’t feel like fooling with him.

He’d bled a little on the stern from his nose and
his mouth, and I dipped a bucket of water that
nearly pulled me overboard the way we were going,
and cleaned her off good with a scrub brush from
under the stern.

‘Slow her down,’ I said to Eddy.

‘What if he floats up?’ Eddy said.

‘I dropped him in about seven hundred fathoms,’
I said. ‘He’s going down all that way. That’s a
long way, brother. He won’t float till the gas brings
him up and all the time he’s going with the current
and baiting up fish. Hell,’ I said, ‘you don’t have
to worry about Mr. Sing.’

59

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

mat did you have against him?’ Eddy asked me
Nothing I said. ‘He was the easiest man to do
business with I ever met. I thought there must be
something wrong all the time.’ °

‘What did you kill him for?’

‘To keep from killing twelve other chinks,’ I said
Harry he said, ‘you’ve got to give me one
because I can feel them coming on. It made me
sick to see his head all loose like that.’
bo I gave him one.

‘What about the Chinks?’ Eddy said.

him W ‘R n f t0 S ,f thCm ?, Ut as ( ? uick as 1 can,’ I told
Before the Y smell up the cabin.’

‘w m C arC y ° U goin S to P ut them?’

him rUn thCm right in t0 the lon S beach,’ I told
‘Take her in now ? 5
Sure,’ I said. ‘Take her in slow.’

We came in slow over the reef , u T

’ a " S “ dy bMK ™ “d

Get up forward and give me the depth.’

me on with thTpohf nfcam^back m ° tioning

-e to st op , j k ? ° 0tWned

ve got abotit five feet’

happens so § we havenftime to^^h <If anythin S
cut loose or break her off.’ ^ ^ Up ’ We can

6o

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

Eddy paid out rope and when finally she didn’t
drag he made her fast. She swung stem in.

‘It’s sandy bottom, you know,’ he said.

‘How much water have we got at the stern?’

‘Not over five feet.’

‘You take the rifle,’ I said. ‘And be careful.’

‘Let me have one,’ he said. He was plenty
nervous.

I gave him one and took down the pump-gun.
I unlocked the cabin door, opened it, and said:
‘Come on out.’

Nothing happened.

Then one Chink put his head out and saw Eddy
standing there with a rifle and ducked back.

‘Come on out. Nobody’s going to hurt you,’ I
said.

Nothing doing. Only lots of talk in Chink.

‘Come on out, you!’ Eddy said. My God, I
knew he’d had the bottle.

‘Put that bottle away,’ I said to him, ‘or I’ll blow
you out of the boat.’

‘Come on out,’ I said to them, ‘or I’ll shoot in
at you.’

I saw one of them looking at the corner of the
door and he saw the beach evidently because he
begins to chatter.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘or I’ll shoot.’

Out they came.

Now I tell you it would take a hell of a mean
man to butcher a bunch of Chinks like that and I’ll

61

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

bet there would be plenty of trouble, too, let alone
mess.

They came out and they were scared and they
didn’t have any guns but there were twelve of them.
I walked backwards down to the stern holding the
pump-gun. ‘Get overboard,’ I said. ‘It’s not over
your heads.’

Nobody moved.

‘Over you go.’

Nobody moved.

‘You yellow rat-eating aliens,’ Eddy said, ‘get
overboard.’

‘Shut your drunken mouth,’ I told him.

‘No swim,’ one Chink said.

‘No need swim,’ I said. ‘No deep.’

‘Come on, get overboard,’ Eddy said.

Come astern here,’ I said. ‘Take your gun in
one hand and your grain pole in the other and show
them how deep it is.’

He showed them, holding up the wet pole.

‘No need swim?’ the one asked me.

‘No.’

‘True?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where we?’

‘Cuba.’

You damn crook,’ he said and went over the
side, hanging on and then letting go. His head went
under but he came up and his chin was out of
water. Damn crook,’ he said. ‘Goddamn crook.’

62

HARRY MORGAN-SPRING

He was mad and plenty brave. He said something
in Chink and the others started going into the water
off the stem.

‘All right/ I said to Eddy. ‘Get the anchor up . 5

As we headed her out, the moon started to come
up, and you could see the Chinks with just their
heads out of water, walking ashore, and the shine of
the beach and the brush behind.

We got out past the reef and I looked back once
and saw the beach and the mountains starting to
show up; then I put her on her course for Key
West.

‘Now you can take a sleep, 5 I said to Eddy.
‘No, wait, go below and open all the ports to get
the stink out and bring me the iodine . 5

‘What’s the matter? 5 he said when he brought it.

‘I cut my finger. 5 -

‘Do you want me to steer? 5

‘Get a sleep, 5 I said. ‘I’ll wake you up. 5

He lay down on the built-in bunk in the cockpit,
over the gas tank, and in a little while he was
asleep.

CHAPTER V

I held the wheel with my knee and opened up
my shirt and saw where Mr. Sing bit me. It was
quite a bite and I put iodine on it, and then I sat
there steering and wondering whether a bite from a
Chinaman was poisonous, and listened to her
running nice and smooth and the water washing
along her, and I figured, Hell, no, that bite wasn’t
poisonous. A man like that Mr. Sing probably
scrubbed his teeth two or three times a day. Some
Mr. Sing. He certainly wasn’t much of a business
man. Maybe he was. Maybe he just trusted me
I tell you I couldn’t figure him.

Well, now it was all simple except for Eddy.
Because he’s a rummy he’ll talk when he gets hot.

I sat there steering and I looked at him and I
thought, hell, he’s as well off dead as the way he is
and then I’m all clear. When I found he was on
board I decided I’d have to do awav with him
but then when everything had come out so nice
1 didn t have the heart. But looking at him lying
there it certainly was a temptation. But then I
thought there’s no sense spoiling it by doing some-
thing you d be sorry for afterwards. Then I started
to think he wasn’t even on the crew list and I’d
have to pay a fine for bringing him in and I didn’t
icnow how to consider him.

64

harry morgan-spring

Well, I had plenty of time to think about it and
I held her on her course and every once in a while
I’d take a drink out of the bottle he’d brought on
board. There wasn’t much in it, and when I’d
finished it, I opened up the only one I had left,
and I tell you I felt pretty good steering, and it. was
a pretty night to cross. It had turned out a good
trip all right, finally, even though it had looked
plenty bad plenty of times.

When it got daylight Eddy woke up. He said
he felt terrible.

‘Take the wheel a minute,’ I told him. ‘I want
to look around.’

I went back to the stem and threw a little water
on her. But she was perfectly clean. I scrubbed the
brush over the side. I unloaded the guns and stowed
them below. But I still kept, the gun on my belt.
It was fresh and nice as you want it below, no smell
at all. A little water had come in through the star¬
board port on to one of the bunks was all; so I shut
the ports. There wasn’t a custom house officer in
the world could smell Chink in her now.

I saw the clearance papers in the net bag hanging
up under her framed licence where I’d shoved them
when I came on board and I took them out to look
them over. Then I went up to the cockpit.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘How did you get on the crew
list?’

‘I met the broker when he was leaving for the
consulate and told him I was going.’

65

E

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘God looks after rummies,’ I told him and I took
the thirty-eight off and stowed it down below.

I made some coffee down below and then I came
up and took the wheel.

‘There’s coffee below,’ I told him.

‘Brother, coffee wouldn’t do me any good.’
You know you had to be sorry for him. He cer¬
tainly looked bad.

About nine o’clock we saw the Sand Key light
just about dead ahead. We’d seen tankers going up
the Gulf for quite a while.

‘We’ll be in in a couple of hours now,’ I said to
him. ‘I’m going to give you the same four dollars a
day just as if Johnson had paid.’

‘How much did you get out of last night?’ he
asked me.

‘Only six hundred,’ I told him.

I don’t know whether he believed me or not.

‘Don’t I share in it?’

‘That’s your share,’ I told him. ‘What I just told
you, and if you ever open your mouth about last
night I’ll hear of it and I’ll do away with you.’

‘You know I’m no squealer, Harry.’

‘You’re a rummy. But no matter how rum dumb
you get, if you ever talk about that, I promise you.’

‘I’m a good man,’ he said. ‘You oughtn’t to talk
to me like that.’

‘They can’t make it fast enough to keep you a
good man,’ I told him. But I didn’t worry about
him any more because who was going to believe

66

HARRY MORGAN — SPRING

him? Mr. Sing wouldn’t make any complaints.
The Chinks weren’t going to. You know the boy
that sculled them out wasn’t. He wouldn’t want to

get himself in trouble. Eddy would mouth about it
sooner or later, maybe, but who believes a rummy?

Why, who could prove anything? Naturally it
would have made plenty more talk when they saw
his name on the crew list. That was luck for me, all
right. I could have said he fell overboard, but it
makes plenty talk. Plenty of luck for Eddy, too.
Plenty of luck, all right.

Then we came to the edge of the stream and the

water quit being blue and was light and greenish
and inside I could see the stakes on the Eastern
and the Western Dry Rocks and the wireless masts
at Key West and the La Concha hotel up high out
of all the low houses and plenty smoke from out
where they’re burning garbage. Sand Key light
was plenty close now and you could see the boat¬
house and the little dock alongside the light and I
knew we were only forty minutes away now and I
felt good to be getting back and I had a good stake
now for the summertime.

‘What do you say about a drink, Eddy?’ I said
to him.

e Ah, Harry,’ he said, T always knew you were

my pal.’

That night I was sitting in the living-room
smoking a cigar and drinking a whisky and water

and listening to Grade Allen, on the radio. The girls

67

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

had gone to the show and sitting there I felt sleepy
and I felt good. There was somebody at the front
door and Marie, my wife, got up from where she
was sitting and went to it. She came back and said
‘It’s that rummy, Eddie Marshall. He says he’s got
to see you.’ 6

Tel! him to get out before I rim him out/ l told
her.

She came back in and sat down and looking out
the window where I was sitting with my feet up I

could see Eddy going along the road under the arc
light with another rummy he’d picked up, the two

of them swaying, and their shadows from the arc
light swaying worse.

‘Poor goddamned rummies,’ Marie said. ‘I uitv
a rummy.’ v '

He’s a lucky rummy.’

There ain’t any lucky rummies,’
You know that, Harry.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess there aren't.’

Marie said.

68

PART TWO

HARRY MORGAN

Autumn

CHAPTER I

They came on across in the night and it blew a
big breeze from the north-west. When the sun was
up he sighted a tanker coming down the Gulf
and she stood up so high and white with the sun on

her in that cold air it looked like tall buildings rising
out of the sea and he said to the nigger, "Where the
hell are we?’

The nigger raised himself up to look.

"Ain’t nothing like that this side of Miami.’

"You know damn well we ain’t been carried up
to no Miami/ he told the nigger.

"All I say ain’t no buildings like that on no
Florida Keys.’

"We’ve been steering for Sand Key.’

"We got to see it then. It or American shoals.’

Then in a little while he saw it was tanker and not
buildings and then in less than an hour he saw
Sand Key light, straight, thin and brown, rising
out of the sea right where it ought to be.

"You got to have confidence steering/ he told the
nigger.

"I got confidence/ the nigger said. "But the way
this trip gone I ain’t got confidence no more.’

"How’s your leg?’

"It hurts me all the time.’

"It ain’t nothing/ the man said. "You keep it
clean and wrapped up and it’ll heal by its-self.’

7i

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

He was steering to the westward now to go in to
lay up for the day in the mangroves by Woman
Key where he would not see anybody and where
the boat was to come out to meet them.

‘You’re going to be all right,’ he told the nigger.

‘I don’t know,’ the nigger said. ‘I hurt bad.’

‘I’m going to fix you up good when we get in to
the place,’ he told him. ‘You aren’t shot bad.
Quit worrying.’

‘I’m shot,’ he said. ‘I ain’t never been shot
before. Any way I’m shot is bad.’

‘You’re just scared.’

‘No, sir. I’m shot. And I’m hurting bad. I’ve
been throbbing all night.’

The nigger went on grumbling like that and he
could not keep from taking the bandage off to look
at it.

‘Leave it alone,’ the man who was steering told
him. The nigger lay on the floor of the cockpit and
there were sacks of liquor, shaped like hams, piled
everywhere. He had made himself a place in them
to lay down in. Every time he moved there was the
noise of broken glass in the sacks and there was the
odour of spilled liquor. The liquor had run all over
everything. The man was steering in for Woman
Key now. He could see it now plainly.

‘I hurt,’ the nigger said. ‘I hurt worse all the
time.’

‘I’m sorry, Wesley,’ the man said. ‘But I got to
steer.’ °

72

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN

‘You treat a man no better than a dog,’ the nigger
said. He was getting ugly now. But the man was
still sorry for him.

‘I’m going to make you comfortable, Wesley,’ he
said. ‘You lay quiet now.’

‘You don’t care what happens to a man,’ the
nigger said. ‘You ain’t hardly human. 5

‘I’m going to fix you up good,’ the man said.
‘You just lay quiet.’

‘You ain’t going to fix me up,’ the nigger said.
The man, whose name was Harry Morgan, said
nothing then because he liked the nigger and there
was nothing to do now but hit him, and he couldn’t
hit him. The nigger kept on talking.

‘Why didn’t we stop when they started shooting?’

The man did not answer.

‘Ain’t a man’s life worth more than a load of
liquor?’

The man was intent on his steering.

‘.All we have to do is to stop and let them take*
the liquor.’

‘No,’ the man said. ‘They take the liquor and
the boat and you go to jail.’

‘I don’t mind jail,’ the nigger said. ‘But I never
wanted to get shot.’

He was getting on the man’s nerves now and the
man was becoming tired of hearing him talk.

‘Who the hell’s shot worse?’ he asked him. ‘You
or me?’

‘You’re shot worse,’ the nigger said. ‘But I ain’t
73

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

never been shot. I didn’t figure to get shot. I ain’t
paid to get shot. I don’t want to be shot.’

‘Take it easy, Wesley,’ the man told him. ‘It
don’t do you any good to talk like that.’

They were coming up on the Key now. They
were inside the shoals and as he headed her into the
channel it was hard to see with the sun on the water.
The nigger was going out of his head, or becoming
religious because he was hurt; anyway he was
talking all the time.

. ‘Why they run liquor now?’ he said. ‘Prohibi¬
tion’s over. Why they keep up a traffic like that?
Whyn’t they bring the liquor in on the ferry?’

The man steering was watching the channel
closely.

£ Why don’t people be honest and decent and make

a decent honest living?’

The man saw where the water was rippling
smooth off the bank even when he could not see the
bank in the sun and he turned her off. He swung her
around, spinning the wheel with one arm, and then
the channel opened out and he took her slowly right
up to the edge of the mangroves. He came astern on
the engines and threw out the two clutches.

‘I can put an anchor down/ he said. 'But I
can’t get no anchor up.’

T can’t even move/ the nigger said.
c You’re certainly in a hell of a shape/ the man
told him.

He had a difficult time breaking out, lifting, and:

■ 74 .

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN

dropping the small anchor but he got it over and
paid out quite a lot of rope and the boat swung in
against the mangroves so they came right into the
cockpit. Then he went back and down into the
cockpit. He thought the cockpit was a hell of a
sight, all right.

All night after he had dressed the nigger’s wound
and the nigger had bandaged his arm he had been
watching the compass, steering, and v/hen it came
daylight he had seen the nigger laying there in the
sacks in the middle of the cockpit, but then he was
watching the seas and the compass and looking for
the Sand Key light and he had never observed
carefully how things were. Things were bad.

The nigger was lying in the middle of the load of
sacked liquor with his leg up. There were eight
bullet holes through the cockpit splintered wide.
The glass was broken in the windshield. He did not
know how much stuff was smashed and wherever
the nigger had not bled, he, himself, had bled.
But the worst thing, the way he felt at the moment,
was the smell of booze. Everything was soaked in it.
Now the boat was lying quietly against the man¬
groves but he could not stop feeling the motion of the
big sea they had been in all night in the Gulf.

‘I’m going to make some coffee,’ he told the
nigger. ‘Then I’ll fix you up again.’

‘I don’t want no coffee.’

‘I do,’ the man told him. But down below he
began to feel dizzy so he came out on deck again.

75

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘I guess we won’t have coffee,’ he said.

‘I want some water.’

‘AH right.’

He gave the negro a cup of water out of a demi¬
john.

‘Why you want to keep on running for when they
started to shoot?’

‘Why they want to shoot?’ the man answered.

‘I want a doctor,’ the nigger told him.

‘What’s a doctor going to do that I ain’t done for
you?’

‘Doctor going to cure me.’

‘You’ll have a doctor to-night when the boat
comes out.’

‘I don’t want to wait for no boat.’

‘All right,’ the man said. ‘We’re going to dump
this liquor now.’

He started to dump it and it was hard work one
handed. A sack of liquor only weighs forty pounds
but he had not dumped very many of them before he
became dizzy again. He sat down in the cockpit and
then he lay down.

‘You going to kill youself,’ the nigger said.

The man lay quietly in the cockpit with his head
against one of the sacks. The branches of the man¬
groves had come into the cockpit and they made a
shadow over him where he lay. He could hear the
wind above the mangroves and looking out at the
high, cold sky, see the thin-blown clouds of the
norther.

76

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN

‘Nobody going to come out with this breeze,’ he
thought. ‘They won’t look for us to have started
with this blowing.’

‘You think they’ll come out?’ the nigger asked.

‘Sure,’ the man said. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s blowing too hard.’

‘They’re looking for us.’

‘Not with it like this. What you want to lie to me
for?’ The nigger was talking with his mouth almost
against a sack.

‘Take it easy, Wesley,’ the man told him.

‘Take it easy, the man says,’ the nigger went on.
‘Take it easy. Take what easy? Take dyin’ like a
dog easy? You got me here. Get me out.’

‘Take it easy,’ the man said, kindly.

‘They ain’t coming,’ the nigger said. ‘I know
they ain’t coming. I’m cold, I tell you. I can’t
stand this pain and cold, I tell you.’

The man sat up feeling hollow and unsteady. The
nigger’s eyes watched him as he rose on one knee,
his right arm dangling, took the hand of his right
arm in his left hand and placed it between his knees
and then pulled himself up by the plank nailed
above the gunwale until he stood, looking down,
down at the nigger, his right hand still held between
his thighs. He was thinking that he had never really
felt pain before.

‘If I keep it out straight, pulled out straight, it
don’t hurt so bad,’ he said.

‘Let me tie it up in a sling, ? the nigger said.

77

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I can t make a bend in the elbow, ’ the man said.
‘It stiffened that way.’

‘What we going to do?’

‘Dump this liquor,’ the man told him. ‘Can’t you
put over what you can reach, Wesley?’

The nigger tried to move to reach a sack, then
groaned and lay back.

‘Do you hurt that bad, Wesley?’

‘Oh, God,’ the nigger said.

‘You don’t think once you moved it, it wouldn’t
hurt so bad?’

‘I’m shot,’ the nigger said. ‘I ain’t going to move.
The man wants me to go to dumpin’ liquor when
I’m shot.’

‘Take it easy . 1

‘You say that once more I go crazy.’

‘Take it easy,’ the man said quietly.

The nigger made a howling noise and, shuffling
with his hands on the deck, picked up the whetstone

from under the coaming.

( 111 kill you/ he said. Til cut your heart out.’

‘Not with no whetstone,’ the man said. ‘Take it

easy, Wesley.’

The nigger blubbered with his face against a sack,
ihe man went on slowly lifting the sacked packages

of hquor and dropping them over the side.

78

CHAPTER II

While he was dumping the liquor he heard the
sound of a motor and looking, saw a boat headed
toward them, coming down the channel around the
end of the Key. It was a white boat with a buff
painted house and a windshield.

‘Boat coming/ he said. ‘Come on, Wesley. 3

‘I can’t. 3

‘I’m remembering from now on,’ the man said.
‘Before was different. 3

‘Go ahead and remember, 3 the nigger told him.
‘I ain’t forgot nothing either. 3

Working fast now, the sweat running down his
face, not stopping to watch the boat coming slowly
down the channel, the man picked up the sacked
packages of liquor with his good arm and dropped
them over the side.

‘Roll over , 3 he reached for the package under
the nigger’s head and swung it over the side. The
nigger sat up.

‘Here they are, 3 he said. The boat was almost
abeam of them.

‘It’s Captain Willie, 3 the nigger said. ‘With a party. 3

In the stern of the white boat two men in flannels
and white cloth hats sat in fishing chairs trolling and
an old man in a felt hat and a windbreaker held the
tiller and steered the boat close past the mangroves
where the booze boat lay.

79

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘What do you say, Harry?’ the old man called
as he passed. The man called Harry waved his good
arm in reply. The boat went on past, the two men
who were fishing looking towards the booze boat and
talking to the old man. Harry could not hear what
they were saying.

‘He’ll make a turn at the mouth and come back,’
Harry said to the negro. He went below and came
up with a blanket. ‘Let me cover you up.’

"Bout time you cover me up. They couldn’t help
but see that liquor. What we goin’ to do?’

‘Willie’s a good skate,’ the man said. ‘He’ll tell
them in town we’re out here. Those fellows fishing
ain’t going to bother us. What they care about us?’

He felt very shaky now and he sat down on the
steering seat and held his right arm tight between his
thighs. His knees were shaking and with the shaking
he could feel the ends of the bone in his upper arm
grate. He opened his knees, lifted his arm out, and
let it hang by his side. He was sitting there, his arm
hanging, when the boat passed them coming back
up the channel. The two men in the fishing chairs
were talking. They had put up their rods and one of
them was looking at him through a pair of glasses.
They were too far out for him to hear what they
were saying. It would not have helped him if he had.

On board the charter boat South Florida, trolling
down the Woman Key channel, because it was too
rough to go out to the reef, Captain Willie Adams
was thinking, so Harry crossed last night. That boy’s

80

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN

got cojones. He must have got that whole blow.
She’s a sea boat all right. How you suppose he
smashed his windshield? Damned if Fd cross a night
like last night. Damned if I’d ever run liquor from
Cuba. They bring it all from Mariel now. It’s sup¬
posed to be wide open. ‘What’s that you say, Cap?’

‘What boat is that?’ asked one of the men in the
fishing chairs.

‘That boat?’

‘Yes, that boat.’

‘Oh, that’s a Key West boat.’

‘What I said was, whose boat is it?’

‘I wouldn’t know that, Cap.’

‘Is the owner a fisherman?’

‘Well, some say he is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He does a little of everything.’

‘You don’t know his name?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You called him Harry.’

‘Not me.’

‘I heard you call him Harry.’

Captain Willie Adams took a good look at the
man who was speaking to him. He saw a high-
cheekboned, thin-lipped, very ruddy face with deep
set grey eyes and a contemptuous mouth looking at
him from under a white canvas hat.

‘I must have called him that by mistake,’ Captain
Willie said.

‘You can see that the man is wounded, Doctor, 9

81

F

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

the other man said, handing the glasses to his com¬
panion.

‘I can see that without glasses,’ the man addressed
as Doctor said. ‘Who is that man?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Captain Willie.

‘Well, you will know,’ the man with the con¬
temptuous mouth said. ‘Write down the numbers
on the bow.’

‘I have them, Doctor.’

‘We’ll go over and have a look,’ the Doctor said.

‘Are you a doctor?’ Captain Willie asked.

‘Not of medicine,’ the grey-eyed man told him.

‘If you’re not a medical doctor I wouldn’t go over
there.’

‘Why not?’

‘If he wanted us he would have signalled us. If
he don’t want us it’s none of our business. Down
here everybody aims to mind their own business.’

‘All right. Suppose you mind yours then. Take us
over to that boat.’

Captain Willie continued on his way up the chan¬
nel, the two-cylinder Palmer coughing steadily.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why don’t you obey my order?’

‘Who the hell you think you are?’ asked Captain
Willie.

‘That’s not the question. Do as I tell you?’

‘Who do you think you are?’

‘All right. For your information, I’m one of the
82

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN
three most important men in the United States

to-day . 5 ^

‘What the hell you doing in Key West, then.

The other man leaned forward. ‘He’s Frederick
Harrison,’ he said impressively.

‘I never heard of him , 5 said Captain Willie.

‘Well, you will , 5 said Frederick Harrison. ‘And
so will everyone in this stinking jerkwater little
town if I have to grub it out by the roots.’

‘You’re a nice fellow,’ said Captain Willie. ‘How
did you get so important ? 5

‘He’s one of the biggest men in the administra¬
tion , 5 said the other man.

‘Nuts , 5 said Captain Willie. ‘If he’s all that what’s
he doing in Key West ? 5

‘He’s just here for a rest , 5 the secretary explained.
‘He’s going to be governor-general of- 5

‘That’s enough, Willis , 5 Frederick Harrison said.
‘Now will you take us over to that boat , 5 he said
smiling. He had a smile which was reserved for such
occasions.

‘No, sir . 5

‘Listen, you half-witted fisherman. I’ll make life
so miserable for you- 5

‘Yes , 5 said Captain Willie.

‘You don’t know who I am . 5

‘None of it don’t mean anything to me , 5 said
Captain Willie.

‘That man is a bootlegger, isn’t he ? 5

‘What do you think ? 5

83

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘There’s probably, a reward for him. 9

T doubt that.’

‘He’s a lawbreaker.’

‘He’s got a family and he’s got to eat and feed
them. Who the hell do you eat off of with people
working here in Key West for the government for
six dollars and a half a week?’

‘He’s wounded. That means he’s been in trouble.’

‘Unless he shot hisself for fun.’

‘You can save that sarcasm. You’re going over to
that boat and we’re going to take that man and that
boat into custody.’

‘Into where?’

‘Into Key West.’

‘Are you an officer?’

‘I’ve told you who he is,’ the secretary said.

‘All right/ said Captain Willie. He pushed the
tiller hard over and turned the boat, coming so close
to the edge of the channel that the propeller threw
up a circling cloud of marl. He chugged down the
channel toward where the other boat lay against the
mangroves.

‘Have you a gun aboard?’ Frederick Harrison
asked Captain Willie.

‘No, sir.’

The two men' in flannels were standing up now
watching the booze boat.

‘This is better fun than fishing, eh, Doctor? 9 the
secretary said.

‘Fishing is nonsense/said Frederick Harrison. ‘If

. 84

HARRY MORGAN —AUTUMN

you catch a sailfish what do you do with it? You
can’t eat it. This is really interesting. I’m glad to see
this at first hand. Wounded as he is that man can¬
not escape. It’s too rough at sea. We know his boat.’

‘You’re really capturing him single-handed,’ said
the secretary admiringly.

‘And unarmed, too,’ said Frederick Harrison.

‘With no G men nonsense,’ said the secretary.

‘Edgar Hoover exaggerates his publicity,’ said
Frederick Harrison. ‘I feel we’ve given him about
enough rope. Pull alongside,’ he said to Captain
Willie. Captain Willie threw out his clutch and the
boat drifted.

‘Hey,’ Captain Willie called to the other boat.
‘Keep your heads down.’

‘What’s that?’ Harrison said angrily.

‘Shut up,’ said Captain Willie. ‘Hey,’ he called
over to the other boat. ‘Listen. Get on into town
and take it easy. Never mind the boat. They’ll take
the boat. Dump your load and get into town. I got
a guy here on board some kind of a stool from Wash¬
ington. More important than the President, he says.
He wants to pinch you. He thinks you’re a boot¬
legger. He’s got the numbers of the boat. I ain’t
never seen you so I don’t know who you are. I
couldn’t identify you-’

The boats had drifted apart. Captain Willie went
on shouting, ‘I don’t know where this place is where
I seen you. I wouldn’t know how to get back here.’

‘O.K.,’ came a shout from the booze boat.

8 5

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Tm taking this big alphabet man fishing until
dark/ Captain Willie shouted.

‘O.K.’

‘He loves to fish/ Captain Willie yelled, his voice
almost breaking. ‘But the son of a bitch claims you
can’t eat ’em. 5

‘Thanks, brother/ came the voice of Harry.

‘That chap your brother?’ asked Frederick Har¬
rison, his face very red but his love for information
still unappeased.

‘No, sir/ said Captain Willie. ‘Most everybody
goes in boats calls each other brother.’

‘We’ll go into Key West/ Frederick Harrison
said; but he said it without great conviction.

‘No, sir/ said Captain Willie. ‘You gentlemen
chartered me for a day. I’m going to see you get
your money’s worth. You called me a halfwit but
I’ll see you get a full day’s charter.’

‘Take us to Key West,’ Harrison said.

‘Yes, sir/ said Captain Willie. ‘Later on. But
listen, sailfish is just as good eating as kingfish. When
we used to sell them to Rios for the Havana market
we got ten cents a pound same as kings.’

‘Oh, shut up/ said Frederick Harrison.

‘I thought you’d be interested in these things as a
government man. Ain’t you mixed up in the prices
of things that we eat or something? Ain’t that it?
Making them more costly or something. Making the
grits cost more and the grunts less?’

‘Oh, shut up/said Harrison.

86

CHAPTER III

On the booze boat Harry had the last sack over..

‘Get me the fish knife,’ he said to the nigger.

‘It’s gone.’

Harry pressed the self-starters and started the two-
engines. He’d put a second engine in her when he
went back to running liquor when the depression
had put charter boat fishing on the bum. He got the
hatchet and with his left hand chopped the anchor
rope through against the bitt. It’ll sink and they’ll
grapple it when they pick up the load, he thought.
I’ll run her up into the Garrison Bight and if they’re
going to take her they’ll take her. I got to get to a
doctor. I don’t want to lose my arm and the boat
both. The load is worth as much as the boat. There
wasn’t much of it smashed. A little smashed can
smell plenty.

He shoved the port clutch in and swung out away
from the mangroves with the tide. The engines ran
smoothly. Captain Willie’s boat was two miles away
now headed for Boca Grande. I guess the tide’s high
enough to go through the lakes now, Harry thought..

He shoved in his starboard clutch and the engines
roared as he pushed up the throttle. He could feel
her bow rise and the green mangroves coasted swiftly
alongside as the boat sucked the water away from
their roots. I hope they don’t take her, he thought.

87

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I hope they can fix my arm. How was I to know
they’d shoot at us in Mariel after we could go and
come there open for six months. That’s Cubans for
you. Somebody didn’t pay somebody so we got the
shooting. That’s Cubans all right.

‘Hey, Wesley,’ he said, looking back into the
cockpit where the nigger lay with the blanket over
him. ‘How you feeling?’

‘God,’ said Wesley. ‘I couldn’t feel no worse.’

‘You’ll feel worse when the old doctor probes for
it,’ Harry told him.

‘You ain’t human,’ the nigger said. ‘You ain’t
got human feelings.’

That old Willie is a good skate, Harry was think¬
ing. There’s a good skate that old Willie. We did
better to come in than to wait. It was foolish to wait.
I felt so dizzy and sicklike I lost my judgment.

Ahead now he could see the white of the La
Concha hotel, the wireless masts, and the houses of
town. He could see the car ferries lying at the
Trumbo dock where he would go around to head up
for the Garrison Bight. That old Willie, he thought.
He was giving them hell. Wonder who those buz¬
zards were. Damn if I don’t feel plenty bad right
now. I feel plenty dizzy. We did right to come in.
We did right not to wait.

‘Mr. Harry,’ said the nigger, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t
help dump that stuff.’

‘Hell,’ said Harry, ‘ain’t no nigger any good
when he’s shot. You’re a all right nigger, Wesley.’

88

HARRY MORGAN-AUTUMN

Above the roar of the motors and the high., slap¬
ping rush of the boat through the water he felt a
strange, hollow singing in his heart. He always felt
this way coming home at the end of a trip. I hope
they can fix that arm, he thought. I got a lot of use
for that arm.

89

PART THREE

HARRY MORGAN

Winter

CHAPTER I

Albert Speaking

We were all in there at Freddy’s place and this tall
thin lawyer comes in and says, ‘Where’s Juan?’

‘He ain’t back yet,’ somebody said.

‘I know he’s back and I’ve got to see him.’

‘Sure, you tipped them off to him and you got
him indicted and now you’re going to defend him,’
Harry said. ‘Don’t you come around here asking
where he is. You probably got him in your pocket.’

‘Balls to you,’ said the lawyer. ‘I’ve got a job
for him.’

‘Well, go look for him some place else,’ Harry
said. ‘He ain’t here.’

‘I’ve got a job for him, I tell you,’ the lawyer said.

‘You ain’t got a job for anybody. All you are is
poison.’

Just then the old man with the long grey hair over
the back of his collar who sells the rubber goods
specialties comes in for a quarter of a pint and
Freddy pours it out for him and he corks it up and
scuttles back across the street with it.

‘What happened to your arm?’ the lawyer asked
Harry. Harry had the sleeve pinned up to the
shoulder.

‘I didn’t like the look of it so I cut it off,’ Harry
told him.

93

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘You and who else cut it off? 5

‘Me and a doctor cut it off/ Harry said. He had
been drinking and he was getting a little along with
it. ‘I held still and he cut it off. If they cut them off
for being in other people’s pockets you wouldn’t
have no hands nor no feet.’

‘What happened to it that they had to cut it off?’
the lawyer asked him.

‘Take it easy/ Harry told him.

‘No, I’m asking you. What happened to it and
where were you?’

‘Go bother somebody else/ Harry told him. ‘You
know where I was and you know what happened.
Keep your mouth shut and don’t bother me.’

‘I want to talk to you/ the lawyer told him.

‘Then talk to me.’

‘No, in back.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you. No good ever comes

of you. You’re poison.’

‘I’ve got something for you. Something good/

‘All right. I’ll listen to you once/ Harry told him,
‘What’s it about? Juan?’

‘No. Not about Juan.’

They went back behind the bend of the bar into
where the booths are and they were gone quite a
while. During the time they were gone Big Lucie’s
daughter came in with that girl from their place that
she’s always around with, and they sat at the bar and
had a coca-cola.

‘They tell me they ain’t going to let no girls out
94

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

on the streets after six o’clock at night and no girls
in any of the places,’ Freddy says to Big Lucie’s
daughter.

‘That’s what they say.’

‘It’s getting to be a hell of a town,’ Freddy says.

‘Hell of a town is right. You just walk outside to
get a sandwich and a coca-cola and they arrest you
and fine you fifteen dollars.’

‘That’s all they pick on now,’ says Big Lucie’s
daughter. ‘Any kind of sporting people. Anybody
with any sort of a cheerful outlook.’

‘If something don’t happen to this town pretty
quick things are going to be bad.’

Just then Harry and the lawyer came back out and
the lawyer said, ‘You’ll be out there then?’

‘Why not bring them here?’

‘No. They don’t want to come in. Out there.’

‘All right,’ Harry said and stepped up to the bar
and the lawyer went on out.

‘What will you have, Al?’ he asked me.

‘Bacardi.’

‘Give us two bacardis, Freddy.’ Then he turned
to me and said, ‘What are you doing now, Al?’

‘Working on the relief.’

‘What doing?’

‘Digging the sewer. Taking the old streetcar rails
up.’

‘What do you get?’

‘Seven and a half.’

‘A week?’

95

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘What did you think?’

‘How do you drink in here?’

‘I wasn’t till you asked me,’ I told him. He edged
over a little towards me. ‘You want to make a trip?’

‘Depends on what it is.’

‘We’ll talk about that.’

‘All right.’

‘Come on out in the car,’ he said. ‘So long,
Freddy.’ He breathed a little fast the way he did
when he’s been drinking and I walked up along
where the street had been tore up, where we’d been
working all day, to the corner where his car was.
‘Get in,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m going to find out.’

We drove up Whitehead Street and he didn’t say
anything and at the head of the street he turned to
the left and we drove across the head of town to
White Street and out on it to the beach. All the
time Harry didn’t say anything and we turned on to
the sand road and drove along it to the boulevard.
Out on the boulevard he pulled the car over to the
edge of the sidewalk and stopped.

‘Some strangers want to charter my boat to make
a trip,’ he said.

( The customs got your boat tied up.’

‘The strangers don’t know that.’

‘What kind of a trip?’

‘They say they want to carry somebody over that
has to go to Cuba to do some business and can’t

96

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

come in by the plane or boat. Bee-lips was telling
me.’

‘Do they do that?’

‘Sure. All the time since the revolution. It sounds
all right. Plenty of people go that way.’

‘What about the boat.’

‘We’ll have to steal the boat. You know they ain’t
got her fixed so I can’t start her.’

‘How you going to get her out of the sub-base?’

Til get her out.’

‘How’rc we coming back?’

‘I’ll have to figure that. If you don’t want to go,
say so.’

‘I’d just as soon go if there’s any money in it.’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re making seven dollars
and a half a week. You got three kids in school that
are hungry at noon. You got a family that their
bellies hurt and I give you a chance to make a little
money.’

‘You ain’t said how much money. You got to
have money for taking chances.’

‘There ain’t much money in any kind of chances
now, Al,’ he said. ‘Look at me. I used to make
thirty-five dollars a day right through the season
taking people out fishing. Now I get shot and lose an
arm, and my boat, running a lousy load of liquor
that’s worth hardly as much as my boat. But let me
tell you, my kids ain’t going to have their bellies hurt
and I ain’t going to dig sewers for the government
for less money than will feed them. I can’t dig now

97

G

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

anyway. -I don’t know who made the laws but I
know there ain’t no law that you got to go hungry. 5

‘I went out on strike against those wages/ I told
him.

‘And you come back to work/ he said. ‘They said
you were striking against charity. You always

worked, didn’t you? You never asked anybody for
charity.’

‘There ain’t any work/ I said. ‘There ain’t any

work at living wages anywhere.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Neither do 1/ he said. ‘But my family is going
to eat as long as anybody eats. What they’re trying
to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can
bum down the shacks and put up apartments and
make thy* a tourist town. That’s what I hear. I hear
they’re buying up lots, and then after the poor
people are starved out and gone somewhere else to
starve some more they’re going to come in and make
it into a beauty spot for tourists.’

‘You talk like a radical/ I said.

‘I ain’t no radical/ he said. ‘I’m sore. I been sore
a long time.’

‘Losing your arm don’t make you feel better.’

‘The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose
an arm. There’s worse things than lose an arm.
You’ve got two arms and you’ve got two of some¬
thing else. And a man’s still a man with one arm or
with one of those. The hell with it/ he says. ‘I

9 3 "

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

don’t want to talk about it.’ Then after a minute
he says, ‘I got those other two still.’ Then he started
the car and said, ‘Come on, we’ll go see these
fellows.’

We rode along the boulevard with the breeze
blowing and a few cars going past and the smell of
dead sea grass on the cement where the waves had
gone over the seawall at high tide, Harry driving
with his left arm. I always liked him all right and
I’d gone in a boat with him plenty of times in the
old days, but he was changed now since he lost his
arm and that fellow down visiting from Washington
made an affidavit that he saw the boat unloading
liquor that time, and the customs seized her. When
he was in a boat he always felt good and without his
boat he felt plenty bad. I think he was glad of an
excuse to steal her. He knew he couldn’t keep her
but maybe he could make a piece of money with her
while he had her. I needed money bad enough but
I didn’t want to get in any trouble. I said to him,
‘You know I don’t want to get in any real trouble,
Harry.’

‘What worse trouble you going to get in than
you’re in now?’ he said. ‘What the hell worse
trouble is there than starving?’

‘I’m not starving,’ I said. ‘What the hell you
always talking about starving for?’

‘Maybe you’re not, but your kids are.’

‘Cut it out,’ I said. ‘I’ll work with you but you
can’t talk that way to me.’

99

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

All right, he said. But be sure you want the

job. I can get plenty of men in this town. 5

‘I want it, 5 1 said. T told you I want it)

‘Then cheer up. 5

You cheei up, I said. ‘You’re the only one that 5 s
talking like a radical . 5

£ Aw, cheer up,’ he said. ‘None of you Conchs has
any guts.’

‘Since when ain’t you a Conch?’

‘Since the first good meal I ever ate.’ He was
mean talking now, all right, and since he was a boy
he never had no pity for nobody. But he never had
no pity for himself cither.

‘All right,’ I said to him.

‘Take it easy,’ he said. Ahead of us I could sec the
lights of this place.

We re going to meet them here,’ Harry said.
Keep your mouth buttoned up.’

‘The hell with you.’

‘Aw, take it easy,’ Harry said as we turned into
the runway and drove around to the back of the
place. He was a bully and he was bad spoken but I

always liked him all right.

• ^^ t 0 P.P e ^ car in back of this place and went
mto the kitchen where the man’s wife was cooking

Freda ’' Ha ^ - id

‘He’s right in there, Harry. Hello, Albert.’

Hello, Miss Richards,’ I said. I knew her ever
since she used to be m jungle town, but two or three

IOO

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

of the hardest working married women in town used
to be sporting women and this was a hard working
woman, I tell you that. ‘Your folks all well?’ she
asked me.

‘They’re all fine.’

We went on through the kitchen and into this back
room. There was Bee-lips the lawyer, and four
Cubans with him, sitting at a table.

‘Sit down,’ said one of them in English. He was a
tough looking fellow, heavy, with a big face and a
voice deep in his throat, and he had been drinking
plenty you could see. ‘What’s your name?’

‘What’s yours?’ said Harry.

‘All right,’ said this Cuban. ‘Have it your own
way. Where’s the boat?’

‘She’s down at the yacht basin,’ Harry said.

‘Who’s this?’ the Cuban asked him, looking at me.

‘My mate,’ Harry said. The Cuban was looking
me over and the other Cubans were looking us both
over. ‘He looks hungry,’ the Cuban said and
laughed. The others didn’t laugh. ‘You want a
drink?’

‘All right,’Harry said.

‘What? Bacardi?’

‘Whatever you’re drinking,’ Harry told him.

‘Does your mate drink?’

‘I’ll have one,’ I said.

‘Nobody asked you yet,’ the big Cuban said. ‘I
just asked if you drank.’

‘Oh, cut it out, Roberto,’ one of the other Cubans,

IOI

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

a young one, not much more than a kid, said. ‘Can’t
you do anything without getting nasty?’

‘What do you mean nasty? I just asked if he
drinks. If you hire somebody don’t you ask if he
drinks?’

‘Give him a drink,’ said the other Cuban. ‘Let’s
talk business.’

‘What you want for the boat, big boy?’ the deep¬
voiced Cuban called Roberto asked Harry.

‘Depends on what you want to do with her’
Harry said. ’

‘Take the four of us to Cuba.’

‘Where in Cuba?’

‘Cabanas. Close to Cabanas. Down the coast
from Mariel. You know where it is?’

‘Sure,’ said Harry. ‘Just take you there?’

‘That’s all. Take us there and put us ashore.’

‘Three hundred dollars.’

Too much. What if we charter you by the day
and guarantee you two weeks’ charter?’

‘Forty dollars a day and you put up fifteen hun¬
dred dollars for if anything happens to the boat. Do
I have to clear it?’

‘No.’

‘You pay for the gas and oil,’ Harry told them.

We 11 give you two hundred dollars to take us
over' there and put us ashore.’

‘Hcj>w much do you want?’

‘I tiold you.’

102

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘That’s too much.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Harry told him. ‘I don’t know who
you are. I don’t know what your business is and I
don’t know who shoots at you. I got to cross the
Gulf twice in the winter time. Anyway I’m risking
my boat. I’ll carry you for two hundred and you
can put up a thousand for a guarantee nothing
happens to the boat.’

‘That’s reasonable,’ Bee-lips told them. ‘That’s
more than reasonable.’

The Cubans started talking in Spanish. I couldn’t
understand them but I knew Harry could.

‘All right,’ the big one, Roberto, said. ‘When can
you start?’

‘Any time to-morrow night.’

‘Maybe we don’t want to go until the night after,’
one of them said.

‘That’s O.K. with me,’ Harry said. ‘Only let me
know in time.’

‘Is your boat in good shape?’

‘Sure,’ said Harry.

‘She is a nice looking boat,’ the young one of them
said.

‘Where did you see her?’

‘Mr. Simmons, the lawyer here, showed her to me.’

‘Oh,’ said Harry.

‘Have a drink,’ said another of the Cubans. ‘Have
you been to Cuba much?’

‘A few times.’

‘Speak Spanish?’

103

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘I never learned it, 5 Harry said.

I saw Bee-lips the lawyer look at him, but he is
so crooked himself that he’s always more pleased if
people aren’t telling the truth. Just like when he
came in to speak to Harry about this job he couldn’t
speak to him straight. He had to pretend he wanted
to see Juan Rodriguez, who is a poor stinking galle-
go that would steal from his own mother that Bee-
lips has got indicted again so he can defend him.

‘Mr. Simmons speaks good Spanish,’ the Cuban
said.

‘He’s got an education.’

‘Can you navigate?’

‘I can go and I can come.’

‘You’re a fisherman?’

‘Yes, sir,’said Harry.

‘How do you fish with one arm?’ the big faced one
ask.d.

You just fish twice as fast,’ Harry told him.
youwant to see me about anything else?’

‘Did

T J hey were all talking Spanish together. ‘Then

111 go, said Harry*

‘I’ll let you know about the boat,’ Bee-lips told
Harry. .

ZZZ? s T emoney got to be P ut up,’ Harry said.
We 11 do that to-morrow.’

‘Well, good night,’ Harry told them.

Good night,’ said the young pleasant speaking
one. The big faced one didn’t say anything. There

104

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

were two others with faces like Indians that hadn’t
said anything at all any of the time except to talk in
Spanish to the big faced one.

‘I’ll see vou later on,’ Bee-lips said.

‘Where?’

‘At Freddy’s.’

We went out and through the kitchen again and
Freda said, ‘How’s Marie, Harry?’

‘She’s fine now,’ Harry told her. ‘She’s feeling
good now,’ and we went out the door. We got in the
car and he drove back to the boulevard and didn’t
say anything at all. He was thinking about some¬
thing all right.

‘Should I drop you home?’

‘All right.’

‘You live out on the county road now?’

‘Yes. What about the trip?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether
there’s going to be any trip. See you to-morrow.’

He drops me in front of where we live and I go
on in and I haven’t got the door open before my old
woman is giving me hell for staying out and drinking
and being late to the meal. I ask her how I can drink
with no money and she says I must be running a
credit. I ask her who she thinks will give me credit
when I’m working on the relief and she says to keep
my rummy breath away from her and sit down to
the table. So I sit down. The kids are all gone to see
the baseball game and I sit there at the table and
she brings the supper and won’t speak to me.

105

CHAPTER II

Harry

l f° d With k but what ^oicc have

Iff Tbe y do “ * «jve you any choice now. I C Z
/J 80 ' b ut what will the next thing be? I didn’t
ask for any of this and if you’ve got to do it you’ve
S °i i? ^ ^ 1 Wouldn’t take Albert. He’s

He dn * h ^ S Stra , lght and he ’ s a S ood m an in a boat
He doesn t spook too easy but I don’t know whether

I ought to take him. But I can’t take no rummy nor
no nigger. I got to have somebody I can depend on
If we make it I’ll see he gets a share. But I Ln’t tell
bm or he wouldn’t go into it and I got to have
somebody by me. It would be better alone any¬
thing is better alone but I don’t think I can handle it

£ter off if he d ^ aW ^bert is

Detter oft if he don t know anything about it The

only flung ts Bee-lip,. There’s Bee-liithat wffl

SS-T "“ything. Still they mns, have ftou^

abnutthat. They must figure on that. Doyousuo-

£ SS'dS T “ d r b £ WOn ’ t tnow w£t

tneywdldo? I wonder. Of course mavbe that-
what they figure to do. Maybe they ain’t going to

%£££? 5“I ift na tural that’s X
would do and I heard that word. If they do it thev’ll

have to do it just when it closes or they’ll have the

xo6

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

coastguard plane down from Miami. It’s dark now
at six. She can’t fly it down under an hour. Once
it’s dark they’re all right. Well, if I’m going to carry
them I got to figure out about the boat. She won’t
be hard to get out but if I take her out to-night and
they find she’s gone they’ll maybe find her. Any¬
way there will be a big fuss. To-night’s the only
time i’ve got to get her out though. I can take her
out with the tide and I can hide her. I can see what
she needs if she needs anything, if they’ve taken off
anything. But I got to fill gas and water. I got a
hell of a busy night all right. Then when I’ve got
her hid Albert will have to bring them in a speed
boat. Maybe Walton’s. I can hire her. Or Bee-lips
can hire her. That’s better. Bee-lips can help me
get the boat out to-night. Bee-lips is the one. Be¬
cause sure as hell they’ve figured about Bee-lips.
They’ve got to have figured about Bee-lips. Sup¬
pose they figure about me and Albert. Did any
of them look like sailors? Did any of them seem like
they were sailors? Let me think? Maybe. The
pleasant one, maybe. Possibly him, that young one.
I have to find out about that because if they figure
on doing without Albert or me from the start there’s
no way. Sooner or later they will figure on us. But
in the Gulf you got time. And I’m figuring all the
time. I’ve got to think right all the time. I can’t
make a mistake. Not a mistake. Not once. Well, I
got something to think about now all right. Some¬
thing to do and something to think about besides

107

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

wondering what the hell’s going to happen. Besid
wondering what’s going to happen to the who
damn thing. Once they put it up. Once you’]
playing for it. Once you got a chance. Instead i
just watching it all go to hell. With no boat to mal
a living with. That Bee-lips. He don’t know wh<
he s into. He ain’t got any idea what this is goin
to be like. I hope he shows up pretty soon down <
Freddy s. I got plenty to do to-night. I better
something to eat. 5

CHAPTER III

It was about nine-thirty when Bee-lips came into
the place. You could see they had given him plenty
out at Richard’s because when he drinks it makes
him cocky and he came in plenty cocky.

‘Well, big shot,’ he says to Harry.

‘Don’t big shot me,’ Harry told him.

‘I want to talk to you, big shot.’

‘Where? Back in your office?’ Harry asked him.

‘Yes, back there. Anybody back there, Freddy?’

‘Not since that law. Say, how long are they going
to have that six o’clock business?’

‘Why don’t you retain me to do something about
it?’ Bee-lips says.

‘Retain you hell,’ Freddy tells him. And the two
of them go back there where the booths and the
cases with the empty bottles are.

There was one electric light on in the ceiling and
Harry looked in all the booths where it was dark
and saw there was no one.

‘Well?’he said.

‘They want it for late day after to-morrow after¬
noon,’Bee-lips told him.

‘What they going to do?’

‘You speak Spanish,’ Bee-lips said.

‘You didn’t tell them that though?’

109

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘No. I’m your pal. You know that.’

‘You’d rat on your own mother.’

Cut it out. Look at what I’m letting you in on. 5
‘When did you get tough?’

Listen, I need the money. I’ve got to get out of

here. I’m all washed up here. You know that
Harry.’ ’

‘Who don’t know that? 5

‘You know how they’ve been financing this
revolution with kidnapping and the rest of it.’

‘I know.’

‘This is the same sort of thing. They’re doing it
for a good cause.’ s

Yeah. But this is here. This is where you were
born. You know everybody works there.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to anybody.’

“With those guys?’

‘I thought you had cojones.’

I got cojones. Don’t you worry about my cojones.
ut I m figuring on keeping on living here.’

I’m not,’ Bee-lips said.

Jesus, thought Harry. He’s said it himself.

I m going to get out,’ Bee-lips said. ‘When are
you going to get the boat out?’

‘To-night.’

‘Who’s going to help you?’

‘You.’

‘J)^ ere you going to put her?’

Where I always put her.’

no

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

There was nothing difficult about getting the boat
out. It was as simple as Harry had figured it. The
night watchman made his rounds on the hour and
the rest of the time he was at the outer gate of the old
Navy Yard. They came into the basin in a skiff, cut
her loose on the ebb tide and she went out herself
with the skiff towing her. Outside, while she drifted
in the channel, Harry checked the motors and found
all they had done was disconnect the distributor
heads. He checked the gas and found she had close
to a hundred and fifty gallons. They hadn’t
syphoned any out of the tanks and she had what he
had left coming across that last time. He had filled
her up before they started and she had burned very
little because they had to come across so slow in the
heavy seas.

‘I’ve got gas at the house in the tank,’ he told
Bee-lips. ‘I can take one load of demijohns out with
me in the car and Albert can bring another if we
need it. I’m going to put her up in the creek right
where it crosses the road. They can come out in a
car.’

‘They wanted you to be right at the Porter Dock.’

‘How can I lay there with this boat?’

‘You can’t. But I don’t think they’ll want to do
any car driving.’

‘Well, we’ll put her there to-night and I can fill
and do what needs to be done and then shift her.
You can hire a speed boat to bring them out. I got
to put her up there now. I got plenty to do. You

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

scuil i n and drive out to the bridge and pick me up.
111 be on the road there in about two hours. I’ll
leave her and come out to the road.’

Til pick you up,’ Bee-lips told him, and Harry
with the motors throttled down so that she moved
quietly through the water, swung her around and
towed the skiff close in to where the riding light of
the cable schooner showed. He threw the clutches
out and held the skiff while Bee-lips got in.

‘•In about two hours,’ he said.

‘All right,’ said Bee-lips.

Sitting on the steering seat, moving ahead slowly
m the dark, keeping well out from the lights at the
head of the docks, Harry thought, Bee-lips is dointt
some work for his money all right. Wonder how
much he thinks he is going to get? I wonder how he
ever hooked up with those guys. There’s a smart kid
who had a good chance once. He’s a good lawyer
too. But it made me cold to hear him say it himself
He put his mouth on his own self all right. It’s funny
how a man can mouth something. When I heard
Inin mouth himself it scared me.

CHAPTER IV

When he came in the house he did not turn on the
light but took off his shoes in the hall and went up
the bare stairs in his stocking feet. He undressed
and got into bed wearing only his undershirt, before
his wife woke. In the dark she said, ‘Harry? 5 and he
said, ‘Go to sleep, old woman 5 .

‘Harry, what’s the matter? 5

‘Going to make a trip. 5

‘Who with? 5

'Nobody. Albert maybe. 5

‘Whose boat? 5

‘I got the boat again. 5

‘When? 5

‘To-night. 5

‘You’ll go to jail, Harry. 5

‘Nobody knows I’ve got her. 5

‘Where is she? 5
‘Hid. 5

Lying still in the bed he felt her lips on his face
and searching for him and then her hand on him
and he rolled over against her close.

‘Do you want to? 5

‘Yes. Now. 5

‘I was asleep. Do. you remember when we’d do it
asleep?’

‘Listen, do you mind the arm? Don’t it make you
feel funny?’

“ 113

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘You’re silly. I like it. Any that’s you I like Put it
a'rossthttePuti,along,here. Goon. I like ii, a?

U s like a flipper on a loggerhead. 5

You ain’t no loggerhead. Do they really do it
three days? Coot for three days?’

S 16 ’ listen, be quiet. We’ll wake the girls.’
They don t know what I’ve got. They won’t
never know what I've got. Ah. Harry. That's U
Ah, you honey.’

‘Wait.’

‘I don’t want no wait. Come on. That’s it. That’s
wwiasten, did you ever do it with a nig^

‘Sure.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Like nurse shark.’

eo <Y I U ^lf Unny ^-? a ; rry ’ 1 wish y° u d Wn’t have to
go- 1 wish you didn t ever have to go. Who’s the
best you ever did it with?’

‘You.’

TW’ Iie ‘ Y ° U aIWayS Iie t0 me ‘ Tb^e. There.

‘No. You’re the best.’

Tm old, 5

‘You’ll never be old.’

I ve had that thing.’

My’^'od' 1 ’ 11 ’' makC ”° > woman's

hSS: £,Sr d Homt^r?

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

she? I think of the damndest things. Look at him,
sleeping just like a baby. I better stay awake so as
to call him. Christ, I could do that all night if a man
was built that way. I’d like to do it and never sleep.
Never, never, no, never. No, never, never, never.
Well, think of that, will you. Me at my age. I ain’t
old. He said I was still good. Forty-five ain’t old.
I’m two years older than him. Look at him sleep.
Look at him asleep there like a kid.

Two hours before it was daylight they were out at
the gas tank in the garage filling and corking demi¬
johns and putting them in the back of the car. Harry
wore a hook strapped to his right arm and shifted
and lifted the wicker-covered demijohns handily.

‘You don’t want no breakfast?’

‘When I come back.’

‘Don’t you want your coffee?’

‘You got it?’

‘Sure. I put it on when we came out.’

‘Bring it out.’

She brought it out and he drank it in the dark
sitting at the wheel of the car. She took the cup and
put it on the shelf in the garage.

‘I’m coming with you to help you handle the
jugs,’she said.

‘All right,’ he told her and she got in beside him,
a big woman, long legged, big handed, big hipped,
still handsome, a hat pulled down over her bleached
blonde hair. In the dark and the cold of the morn-

116

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

log they drove out the county road through the mist
that hung heavy over the flat.

‘What you worried about, Harry?"

‘I don’t know. I’m just worried. ^Listen, are you
letting your hair grow out?’

‘I thought I would. The girls have been after me."
‘The hell with them. You keep it like it is.’
T)o you really want me to?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the way I like it.’

‘You don’t think Tlook too old?’

‘You look better than any of them.’

‘I’ll fix it up then. I can make it blonder if you
like it.’

‘What have the girls got to say about what you

do?’ Harry said, ‘They got no business to bother
you.’

‘You know how they are. You know young girls
arc that way. Listen, if you make a good trip, we’ll
go to New Orleans, should we?’

‘Miami.’

‘Well, Miami anyway. And we’ll leave them

here.’

‘I got some trip to make first.’

‘You aren’t worried, are you?’

‘No.’

‘You know I lay awake almost four hours just

thinking about you.’

‘You’re some old woman.’

T can think about you any time and get excited.’
‘Well, we got to fill this gas now,’ Harry told her.
117

CHAPTER V

At ten o’clock in the morning in Freddy’s place
Harry was standing in against the bar with four or
five others, and two customs men had just left. They
had asked him about the boat and he had said he
did not know anything about it.

‘Where were you last night?’ one of them asked

Here and at home.’

How late were you here?’

‘Until the place shut.’

‘Anybody see you here?’

‘Plenty of people,’ Freddy said.

.‘What’s the matter?’ Harry asked them. ‘Do you
think I’d steal my own boat? What would I do with

I just asked you where you were,’ the customs
house officer said. ‘Don’t get plugged.’

‘I’m not plugged,’ Harry said. ‘I was plugged
back when they seized the boat without any proof
she carried liquor.’ 7 p

‘There was an affidavit sworn to,’ the customs
man said. It wasn’t my affidavit. You know the
man that made it.’

All right,’ said Harry. ‘Only don’t say I’m
plugged at you asking me. I’d rather you had her

WW U *t, ^ C T * ^ a c ^ ance to get her back.

What chance I got if she’s stolen?’

118

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

‘None, I guess/ said the customs man.

‘Well, go peddle your papers/ Harry said.
‘Don’t get snotty/ said the customs man, ‘or I’ll
see you get something to be snotty about.’

‘After fifteen years/ said Harry.

‘You haven’t been snotty fifteen years.’

‘No, and I haven’t been in jail either.’

‘Well, don’t be snotty or you will be.’

‘Take it easy/ Harry said. Just then this goofy
Cuban that drives a taxi came in with a fellow from
the plane and Big Rodger says to him,

‘Hayzooz, they tell me you had a baby.’

‘Yes, sir, 9 says Hayzooz very proudly.

‘When did you get married?’ Rodger asked him.
‘Lasta month. Montha for last. You come the
wedding?’

‘No/ said Rodger. ‘I didn’t come the wedding.’
‘You missa something/ said Hayzooz. ‘You missa
damn fine wedding. Whas a matta you no come?’
‘You didn’t ask me.’

‘Oh, yes/ said Hayzooz. ‘I forget. I didn’t ask
you . . . You get what you want?’ he asked the

stranger.

‘Yes, I think so. Is that the best price you have on
Bacardi?’

‘Yes, sir/ Freddy told him. ‘That’s the real carta
del oro.’

‘Listen, Hayzooz, what makes you think that’s

your baby?’ Rodger asks him. ‘That’s not your

Ww 5

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘What you mean not my baby? What you mean?
By God, I no let you talk like that! What you mean
not my baby? You buy the cow you no get the calf?
That’s my baby. My God, yes. My baby. Belong
to me. Yes, sir? °

He goes out with the stranger and the bottle of
Bacardi and the laugh is on Rodger all right. That
Hayzooz is a character all right. Him and that
other Cuban, Sweetwater.

Just then in comes Bee-lips the lawyer, and he
says to Harry, ‘The customs just went out to take
your boat.’

Harry looked at him and you could see the murder
come in his face. Bee-lips went on in this same
tone without any expression in it. ‘Somebody saw
it in the mangroves from the top of one of those
high WPA ^trucks and called up from where
they re building the camp out at Boca Chica to the
customs house. I just saw Herman Frederichs.
He told me.’

, ..{? arr y didn>t sa y anything, but you could see the
ng go out of his face and his eyes came open
natural again. Then he said to Bee-lips, ‘You hear
everything, don’t you?’

‘I thought you’d like to know,’ Bee-lips said in
tnat same expressionless voice.

Its none of my concern,’ Harry said. ‘They
might to take better care of a boat than that.’

1 he two of them stood there at the bar and neither
one said anything until Big Rodger and the two or

120

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

three others had drifted out. Then they went in
the back.

‘You’re poison,’ Harry said. ‘Everything you
touch is poison.’

‘Is it my fault a truck could see it? You picked
the place. You hid your own boat.’

‘Shut up,’ Harry said. ‘Did they ever have high
trucks like that before? That’s the last chance I
had to make any honest money. That’s the last
chance I got to go in a boat where there’s any
money.’

‘I let you know as soon as it happened.’

‘You’re like a buzzard.’

‘Cut it out,’ Bee-lips said. ‘They want to go late
this afternoon now.’

‘The hell they do.’

‘They’re getting nervous about something.’

‘What time do they want to go?’

‘Five o’clock.’

‘I’ll get a boat. I’ll carry them to hell.’

‘That isn’t a bad idea.’

‘Don’t mouth that now. Keep your mouth off
my business.’

‘Listen, you big murdering slob,’ said Bee-lips,
‘I try to help you out and get you in on some¬
thing . . .’

‘And all you do is poison me. Shut up. You’re
poison to anybody that ever touched you.’

‘Cut it out, you bully.’

‘Take it easy,’ Harry said. ‘I got to think. All
iai

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I’ve done is think one thing out and I got it thought,
out and now I got to think out something else.’
‘Why don’t you let me help you?’

‘You come here at twelve o’clock and bring that
money to put up for the boat.’

As they came out Albert came up to the place and
went up to Harry.

‘I’m sorry, Albert, I can’t use you,’ Harry said.
He had thought it out that far already.

‘I’d go cheap,’ Albert said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘I got no need for you
now.’

‘You won’t get a good man for what I’ll go for,’
Albert said.

‘I’m going by myself.’ 11

‘You don’t w -1 ' to make a trip like that alone,’
Albert said.

‘Shut up,’ said Irl Vy. ‘What do you know about
it? Do they teach you pry business on the relief?’

‘Go to hell,’ said Albert.

^ ‘Maybe I will,’ said Harry. Anybody looking at
him could tell he was thinking plenty fast and he
did not want to be bothered.

‘I’d like to go,’ Albert said.

‘I can’t use you,’ Harry said. ‘Let me alone,
will you?’

Albert went out and Harry stood there at the
bar looking at the nickel machine, the two HW
machines and the quarter machine and at the

122

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

picture of Custer's Last Stand on the wall as though
he’d never seen them.

That was a good one Hayzooz told Big Rodger
about the baby, wasn’t it?’ Freddy said to him,
putting some coffee glasses in the bucket of soapy
water.

‘Give me a package of Chesterfields,’ Harry said
to him. He held the package under the flap of his
arm and opened it at one corner, took a cigarette
out and put it in his mouth, then dropped the
package in his pocket and lit the cigarette.

‘What shape’s your boat In, Freddy?’ he asked.

‘I just had her on the ways,’ Freddy said. c She’s
in good shape.’

‘Do you want to charter her?’

‘What for?’

Tor a trip across.’

‘Not unless they put up the value of her.’

‘What’s she worth?’

‘Twelve hundred dollars.’

‘I’ll charter her,’ Harry said. ‘Will you trust me

on her?’

‘No,’ Freddy told him.

‘I’ll put up the house as security.’

‘I don’t want your house. I want twelve hundred
bucks up.’

‘All right,’ Harry said.

‘Bring arount the money,’ Freddy told him.

‘When Bee-lips comes in, tell him to wait for
me/ Harry said and went out.

123

CHAPTER VI

Out at the house Marie and the girls were having
lunch. 6

‘Hello, Daddy,’ said the oldest girl. ‘Here’s
Daddy.’

‘What have you got to eat?’ Harry asked.

‘‘We’ve got a steak,’ Marie said.

‘Somebody said they stole your boat, Daddy.’

‘They found her,’ Harry said.

Marie looked at him.

‘Who found her?’ she asked.

‘The customs.’

‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, full of pity.

‘Isn’t it better they found her, Daddy?’ asked the
second one of the girls.

‘Don’t talk while you’re eating,’ Harry told her.
‘Where’s my dinner? What you waiting for ? ’

Tm bringing it.’ '

I m in a hurry,’ Harry said. ‘You girls eat up
and get out. I got to talk to your mother.’

‘Gm we have some money to go to the show this
aft. Daddy?’

‘Why don’t you go swimming. That’s free.’

Oh, Daddy, it’s too cold to go swimming, and we
want to go to the show.’

All right,’ said Harry. ‘All right.’

When the girls were out of the room he said to
Mane, ‘Gut it up, will you?’

124

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER
'Sure, Honey.’

She cut the meat as for a small boy.

'Thanks/ Harry said. Tra a hell of a goddamn
nuisance, ain’t I? Those girls aren’t much, are they? ’
'No, Hon.’

'Funny we couldn’t get no boys.’

'That’s because you’re such a man. That way it
always comes out girls.’

'I ain’t no hell of a man/ Harry said. 'Rut

listen, I’m going on a hell of a trip.’

‘Tell me about the boat.’

‘They saw it from a truck. A high truck.’
‘Shucks.’

‘Worse than that. S—.’

‘Aw; Harry, don’t talk like that in the house.’

‘You talk worse than that in bed sometimes.’
'That’s different. I don’t like to hear s— at my
own table.’

'Oh, s—.’

‘Aw, Honey, you feel bad/ Marie said.

■ ‘No/ said Harry. ‘Im just thinking.’ .

‘Well, you think it out. I got confidence in you.’
‘I got confidence. That’s the only thing I have
got.’

'Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘No. Only don’t worry no matter what you
hear/

'I won’t worry.’

'Listen, Marie. Go on up to the upstairs trap and

bring me the Thompson gun and look in that

' *25

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

wooden box with the shells and see all the dins are
filled.’ F

‘Don’t take that.’

‘I got to.’

‘Do you want any boxes of shells?’

‘No. I can’t load any clips. I got four clips.’

‘Honey, you aren’t going on that kind of a trip?’

‘I’m going on a bad trip.’

Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, I wish you didn’t
have to do these things.’

‘Go on and get it and bring it down here. Get
me some coffee.’

‘O.K.,’ said Marie. She leaned over the table
and kissed him on the mouth.

‘Leave me alone,’ Harry said. ‘I got to think.’

He sat at the table and looked at the piano, the
sideboard and the radio, the picture of September
Morn, and the pictures of the cupids holding bows
behind their heads, the shiny, real-oak table and the
shiny real-oak chairs and the curtains on the
windows and he thought, What chance have I to
eiy'oy my home? Why am I back to worse
where I started? It’ll be all gone too if I don’t play
this right. The hell it will. I haven’t got sixty bucks
kft outside of the house, but I’ll get a stake out of
tins. Those damn girls. That’s all that old woman
and I could get with what we’ve got. Do you
suppose the boys in her went before I knew her?

Here it is,’ said Marie, carrying it by the web
slmg strap. ‘They’re all full.’

126

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘I got to go/ Harry said. He lifted the chunky
weight of the dismounted gun in its oil-stained,

canvas-web case. Tut it under the front seat of the
car . 5

‘Good-bye/ Marie said.

c Good-bye, old woman . 5

£ I won’t worry. But please take care of yourself . 5

‘Be good . 5

‘Aw, Harry/ she said and held him tight against

her.

‘Let me go. I ain’t got no time . 5

He patted her on the back with his arm stump.

‘You and your loggerhead flipper/ she said.
‘Oh, Harry. Be careful.’

‘I got to go. Good-bye, old woman.’

‘Good-bye, Harry.’

She watched him go out of the house, tall, wide¬
shouldered, flat-backed, his^ hips narrow, moving,
still, she thought, like some kind of animal, easy
and swift and not old yet, he moves so light and
smooth-like, she thought, and when he got in the
car she saw him blond, with the sunburned hair,
his face with the broad mongol cheek bones, and
the narrow eyes, the nose broken at the bridge, the
wide mouth and the round jaw, and getting in the
car he grinned at her and she began to cry. e His
goddamn face/ she thought. ‘Every time I see his
goddamn face it makes me want to cry . 5

127

CHAPTER VII

There were three tourists at the bar at Freddy’s
and Freddy was serving them. One was a very
tall, thin, wide-shouldered man, in shorts, wearing
tluck-lensed spectacles, tanned, with small closely
trimmed sandy moustache. The woman with him
had her blonde curly hair cut short like a man’s a
bad complexion, and the face and build of a lady
wrestler. She wore shorts, too. y

‘Oh, nerts to you,’ she was saying to the third
tourist, who had a rather swollen reddish face a
rusty-coloured moustache, a white cloth hat with a
green celluloid visor, and a trick of talking with a
rather extraordinary movement of his lips as though
he were eating something too hot for comfort.

‘How charming,’ said the green-visored ’ man.

1 d never heard the expression actually used in
conversation. I thought it was an obsolete phrase
something one saw in print in - er - the funnv
papers but never heard.’ 1

Nerts, nerts, double nerts to you,’ said the lady
wrestler m a sudden access of charm, giving him
the benefit of her pimpled profile.

, v ^ ow beautiful,’ said the green-visored man.

You put it so prettily. Isn’t it from Brooklyn
originally?’ y

You mustn’t mind her. She’s my wife,’ the tall
tourist said. ‘Have you two met?’

128

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘Oh, nerts to him and double nerts to meeting
him,’ said the wife. ‘How do you do?’

‘Not so badly,’ the green-visored man said.
‘How do you do?’

‘She does marvellously,’ the tall one said. ‘You
ought to see her.’

Just then Harry came in and the tall tourist’s
wife said, ‘Isn’t he wonderful? That’s what I want.
Buy me that, Papa.’

‘Can I speak to you?’ Harry said to Freddy.

‘Certainly. Go right ahead and say anything you
like,’ the tall tourist’s wife said.

‘Shut up, you whore,’ Harry said. ‘Come in the
back, Freddy.’

In the back was Bee-lips, waiting at the table.

‘Hello, Big Boy,’ he said to Harry.

‘Shut up,’ said Harry.

‘Listen,’ Freddy said. ‘Cut it out. You can’t
get away with that. You can’t call my trade names
like that. You can’t call a lady a whore in a decent
place like this.’

‘A whore,’ said Harry. ‘Hear what she said to me?’

‘Well, anyway, don’t call her a name like that to
her face.’

‘All right. You got the money?’

‘Of course,’ said Bee-lips. ‘Why wouldn’t I have
the money? Didn’t I say I’d have the money?’

‘Let’s see it.’

Bee-lips handed it over. Harry counted ten
hundred-dollar bills and four twenties.

129

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘Oh, nerts to him and double nerts to meeting
him,’ said the wife. ‘How do you do? 5

‘Not so badly,’ the green-visored man said.
‘How do you do?’

‘She does marvellously, 5 the tall one said. ‘You
ought to see her.’

Just then Harry came in and the tall tourist’s
wife said, ‘Isn’t he wonderful? That’s what I want.
Buy me that, Papa.’

‘Can I speak to you?’ Harry said to Freddy.

‘Certainly. Go right ahead and say anything you
like,’ the tall tourist’s wife said.

‘Shut up, you whore,’ Harry said. ‘Come in the
back, Freddy.’

In the back was Bee-lips, waiting at the table.

‘Hello, Big Boy,’ he said to Harry.

‘Shut up,’ said Harry.

‘Listen,’ Freddy said. ‘Cut it out. You can’t
get away with that. You can’t call my trade names
like that. You can’t call a lady a whore in a decent
place like this.’

‘A whore,’ said Harry. ‘Hear what she said to me?’

‘Well, anyway, don’t call her a name like that to
her face.’

‘All right. You got the money?’

‘Of course,’ said Bee-lips. ‘Why wouldn’t I have
the money? Didn’t I say I’d have the money?’

‘Let’s see it.’

Bee-lips handed it over. Harry counted ten
hundred-dollar bills and four twenties.

129

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘It should be twelve hundred.’

‘Less my commission,’ said Bee-lips.

‘Come on with it.’

‘No.’

‘Come on.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘You miserable little crut.’

‘You big bully,’ Bee-lips said. ‘Don’t try to strong
arm it away from me because I haven’t got it here.’

‘I see,’ said Harry. ‘I should have thought of
that. Listen, Freddy. You’ve known me a long
time. I know she’s worth twelve hundred. This is a
hundred and twenty short. Take it and take a
chance on the hundred and twenty and the charter.’
^ ‘That’s three hundred and twenty dollars,’
Freddy said. It was a painful sum for him to name
as a risk, and he sweated while he thought about it.

‘I got a car and a radio in the house that’s good
for it.’ a

‘I can make out a paper on that,’ Bee-lips said.

‘I don’t want any paper,’ Freddy said. He sweat
again and his voice was hesitant. Then he said, ‘All
right, 111 take a chance. But for Christ’s sake be
careful with the boat, will you Harry?’

‘Like it was my own.’

‘You lost your own,’ said Freddy, still sweating,
his suffering now intensified by that memory.

‘I’ll take care of her.’

‘I’ll put the money in my box in the bank,’
Freddy said.

130

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

Harry looked at Bee-lips.

‘That’s a good place,’ he said, and grinned.

‘Bartender,’ some one called from the front.

‘That’s you,’ Harry said.

‘Bartender,’ came the voice again.

Freddy went out to the front.

"That man insulted me,’ Harry could hear the
high voice saying, but he was talking to Bee-lips.

‘I’ll be tied up to the dock there at the front of the
street. It isn’t half a block.’

‘All right.’

‘That’s all.’

‘All right, Big Shot.’

‘Don’t you big shot me.’

‘However you like.’

‘I’ll be there from four o’clock on.’

‘Anything else?’

‘They got to take me by force, see? I know
nothing about it. I’m just working on the engine.
I got nothing aboard to make a trip. I’ve hired her
from Freddy to go charter fishing. They’ve got to
hold a gun on me to make me start her and they’ve
got to cut loose the lines.’

‘What about Freddy? You didn’t hire her to go
fishing from him.’

‘I’m going to tell Freddy.’

‘You better not.’

‘I’m going to.’

‘You better not.’

‘Listen, I’ve done business with Freddy since
131

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

during the war. Twice I’ve been partners with hin
^id we never had trouble. You know how mud
stuff I ve handled for him. He’s the only son-of-a
Ditch in this town I would trust. 5
£ I wouldn’t trust anybody.’

‘Tom shouldn’t. Not after the experiences you’w

had with yourself . 5
‘Lay off me. 5

‘All right. Go out and see your friends. What’'

your out ? 5

They’re Cubans. I met them out at the road-
house. One of them wants to cash a certified cheque
What s wrong with that?’

^And you don’t notice anything?’

No. I tell them to meet me at the bank.’

‘Who drives them?’

‘Some taxi.’

he supposed to think they are, violinists?’
We II get one that don’t think. There’s plenty of
them that can’t think in this town. Look at

rlayzooz . 5

Hayzooz is smart. He just talks funnv 5

Til have them call a stupid one.’

‘Get one hasn’t any kids.’

, • got Ever see a taxi driver without

kids?

‘You are a goddamn rat.’

‘Well, I never killed anybody,’ Bee-lips told him.
Nor you never will. Come on, let’s get out of
here. Just being with you makes me feel crummy.’

132

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘Maybe you are crummy.’

‘Can you get them from talking?’

‘If you don’t paper your mouth.’

‘Paper yours then.’

‘I’m going to get a drink,’ Harry said.

Out in front the three tourists sat on their high
stools. As Harry came up to the bar the woman
looked away from him to register disgust.

‘What will you have?’ asked Freddy.

‘What’s the lady drinking?’ Harry asked.

‘A Cuba Libre.’

‘Then give me a straight whisky.’

The tall tourist with the little sandy moustache
and the thick-lensed glasses leaned his large, straight¬
nosed face over toward Harry and said, ‘Say, what’s
the idea of talking that way to my wife?’

Harry looked him up and down and said to
Freddy, ‘What kind of a place you running?’

‘What about it?’ the tall one said.

‘Take it easy,’ Harry said to him.

‘You can’t pull that with me.’

‘Listen,’ Harry said. ‘You came down here to
get well and strong, didn’t you? Take it easy.’
And he went out.

‘I should have hit him, I guess,’ the tall tourist
said. ‘What do you think, dear?’

‘I wish I was a man,’ his wife said.

‘You’d go a long way with that build,’ the green-
visored man said into his beer.

i33

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

What did you say?’ the tall one asked.

I said you could find out his name and address
~ e hlm a letter telling him what you think

‘Say, what’s your name, anyway? What are you
doing, kidding me?’ y

Just call me Professor MacWalsey.’

‘My name’s Laughton,’ the tall one said. ‘I’m
a writer.’

.T-g lad to meet you,’ Professor MacWalsey
said. Do you write often?’ ‘

The tall man looked around him. ‘Let’s get out
of here, dear,’ he said. ‘Everybody is either
insulting or nuts.’

‘It’s a strange place,’ said Professor MacWalsey
Fascinating, really. They call it the Gibraltar of
America and it’s three hundred and seventy-five
miles south of Cairo, Egypt. But this place is the
only part of it I’ve had time to see yet. It’s a fine
place though.’

T see you’re a professor all right,’ the wife said,
xou know, I like you.’

•'I y° u too > darling,’ Professor MacWalsey
said. But I have to go now.’

He got up and went out to look for his bicycle
^ Everybody is nuts here,’ the tall man said,
onould we have another drink, dear?’

I liked the professor,’ the wife said. ‘He had a
sweet manner.’

That other fellow . .

134

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

Oh, he had a beautiful face,’ the wife said. ‘Like

a Tartar or something. I wish he hadn’t been
insulting. He looked kind of like Jenghiz Khan in
the face. Gee, he was big.’

‘He had only one arm,’ her husband said.

T didn’t notice,’ the wife said.’ ‘Should we have
another drink? I wonder who’ll come in next!’
‘Maybe Tamerlane,’ the husband said.

‘Gee, you’re educated,’ the wife said. ‘But that
Jenghiz Khan one would do me. Why did the
Professor like to hear me say nerts?’

I don’t know, dear,’ Laughton, the writer, said.
‘I never did.’

‘He seemed to like me for what I really am,’ the
wife said. ‘My, he was nice,’

‘You’ll probably see him again.’

‘Any time you come in here you’ll see Am, 9
Freddy said. ‘He lives in here. He’s been here for
two weeks now.’

‘Who’s the other one who speaks so rude?’

‘Him? Oh, he’s a fellow from around here.’
‘What does he do?’

‘Oh, a little of everything,’ Freddy told her.
‘He’s a fisherman.’

‘How did he lose his arm?’

‘I don’t know. He got it hurt some way.’

‘Gee, he’s beautiful,’ the wife said.

Freddy laughed. ‘I heard him called a lot of
things but I never heard him called that.’

‘Don’t you think he has a beautiful face?’

*35

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

a Z^iV* e ^ 7, kdy / Fredd y told her. ‘He’s got
a face like a ham with a broken nose on it.’ S

dr“m S ' Upid ’’ *' ™ fe said ' ‘ He ’ s “Y

‘He’s a bad-dream man, 5 Freddy said.

stunid WritCr Sat there with a s °rt of

^upid bok on his face except when he’d look at his

STa 7 ' Anyone would have to be a writer

man to W a wife look like that,
Freddy thought. God, isn’t she awful?

Just then in came Albert.

‘Where’s Harry?’

Down at the dock.’

‘Thanks,’ said Albert.

. He ™ ent out and the wife and the writer kept on
sitting there and Freddy stood there worrying a P bout
the boat and thinking how his legs hurt from
standing up all day. He had put a grfting over the

le e r n l f n ? dn,t Seem to do ®“ch good, ffis
legs ached all the toe. Still he was doing a good

overhead ** anybody in town and with less

what kfnH J W ° man Was Soofy all right. And
like that tf v man . V Y as l would P ick out a woman
shut, thought: fteJfy.* Hot°Un b^o^

4is. w ?L« d ” l r ni i; d drinks -

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Right away.’

tanned-faced, sandy-haired, well-built man

1 Federal Emergency Relief Administration
136

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

wearing a striped fisherman’s shirt and khaki shorts
came in with a very pretty girl who wore a thin,
white wool sweater and dark blue slacks.

"If it isn’t Richard Gordon , 5 said Laughton,
standing up, "with the lovely Miss Helen . 5

"Hello, Laughton , 5 said Richard Gordon. "Did
you see anything of a rummy professor around here ? 5

"He just went out , 5 said Freddy.

"Do you want a vermouth, sweetheart ? 5 Richard
Gordon asked his wife.

"If you do , 5 she said. Then said, "Hello , 5 to the
two Laughtons. "Make mine two parts of French
to one Italian, Freddy . 5

She sat on a high stool with her legs tucked under
her and looked out at the street. Freddy looked at
her admiringly. He thought she was the prettiest
stranger in Key West that winter. Prettier even
than the famous beautiful Mrs. Bradley. Mrs.
Bradley was getting a little big. This girl had a
lovely Irish face, dark hair that curled almost to
her shoulders and smooth clear skin. Freddy looked
at her brown hand holding the glass.

"How’s the work ? 5 Laughton asked Richard
Gordon.

Tra going all right , 5 Gordon said. "How are you
doing? 5

"James won’t work , 5 Mrs. Laughton said. "He
just drinks . 5

"Say, who is this Professor MacWalsey ? 5 Laughton

asked.

*37

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Oh, he s some sort of professor of economics I
think, on a sabbatical year or something. He’s a
friend of Helen’s.’

‘I like him,’ said Helen Gordon.

‘I like him, too,’ said Mrs. Laughton.

( I liked him first,’ Helen Gordon said happily.

4 Oh, you can have him,’ Mrs. Laughton said.
‘You good little girls always get what you want.’

‘That’s what makes us so good,’ said Helen
Gordon.

‘I’ll have another vermouth,’ said Richard
Gordon. ‘Have a drink?’ he asked the Laughtons.

Why not,’ said Laughton. ‘Say, are you going
to that big party the Bradleys are throwing to¬
morrow?’

‘Of course he is,’ said Helen Gordon.

‘I like her, you know,’ said Richard Gordon.
‘She interests me both as a woman and as a social
phenomenon.’

Gee, said Mrs. Laughton. ‘You can talk as
educated as the Professor.’

‘Don’t strut your illiteracy, dear,’ said Laughton.

‘Do people go to bed with a social phenomenon?’
asked Helen Gordon looking out the door.

‘Don’t talk rot,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘I mean is it part of the homework of a writer?’
Helen asked.

‘A writer has to know about everything,’ Richard
Gordon said. ‘He can’t restrict his experience to
conform to bourgeois standards.’

138

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘Oh/ said Helen Gordon. ‘And what does a

writer’s wife do?’

‘Plenty, I guess,’ Mrs. Laughton said. ‘Say, you
ought to have seen the man who was just in here
and insulted me and James. He was terrific.’

‘I should have hit him,’ Laughton said.

‘He was really terrific,’ said Mrs. Laughton.

‘I’m going home,’ said Helen Gordon. ‘Are you
coming, Dick?’

‘I thought I’d stay down town a while,’ Richard

Gordon said.

‘Yes?’ said Helen Gordon, looking in the mirror

behind Freddy’s head.

‘Yes,’ Richard Gordon said.

Freddy, looking at her, figured that she was going
to cry. He hoped it wouldn’t happen in the place.

‘Don’t you want another drink?’ Richard Gordon
asked her.

‘No.’ She shook her head.

‘Say, what’s the matter with you?’ asked Mrs.
Laughton. ‘Aren’t you having a good time?’

‘A dandy time,’ said Helen Gordon. ‘But I think
I’d better go home just the same.’

‘I’ll be back early,’ Richard Gordon said.

‘Don’t bother,’ she told him. She went out.
She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t found John Mac-
Walsey .either.

*39

CHAPTER VIII

Down at the dock Harry Morgan had driven up
alongside of where the boat lay, seen there was no
one around, lifted the front seat of his car, skidded
the flat, web, oil-heavy case out and dropped it
down into the cockpit of the launch.

He got in himself and opened the engine hatch
and put the machine-gun case below out of sight.
He turned on the gas valves and started both
engines. The starboard engine ran smoothly after a
couple of minutes, but the port engine missed on the
second and fourth cylinders and he found the plugs
were cracked, looked for some new plugs, but
couldn’t find them.

‘Got to get plugs and fill gas,’ he thought.

Below with the engines, he opened the machine-
gun case and fitted the stock to the gun. He found
two pieces of fan belting and four screws, and cutting
slits in the belting rigged a sling to hold the gun
under the cockpit floor to the left of the hatch; just
over the port engine. It lay there, cradled easily,
and he shoved a clip from the four held in the web
pockets in the case up into the gun. Kneeling
between the two engines he reached up to take the
gun. There were only two movements to make.
First unhook the strap of belting that passed around
the receiver just behind the bolt. Then pull the

140

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

gun out of the other loop. He tried it and it came
easily one-handed. He pushed the little lever all
the way over from semi-automatic to automatic
and made sure the safety was on. Then he fastened
it up again. He could not figure out where to put
the extra clips; so he shoved the case under a gas
tank below, where he could reach it, with the butts
of the clips lying toward his hand. If I go down a
time first after we’re under way, I can put a couple
in my pocket, he thought. Be better not to have it
on for something might jar the damn thing off.

He stood up. It was a fine clear afternoon,
pleasant, not cold, with a light north breeze. It was
a nice afternoon all right. The tide was running out
and there were two pelicans sitting on the piling
at the edge of the channel. A grunt fishing boat,
painted dark green, chugged past on the way
around to the fish market, the negro fisherman
sitting in the stern holding the tiller. Harry looked
out across the water, smooth with the wind blowing
with the tide, grey blue in the afternoon sun, out to
the sandy island formed when the channel was
dredged where the shark camp had been located.
There were white gulls flying over the island.

c Be a pretty night , 5 Harry thought. ‘Be a nice
night to cross . 5

He was sweating a little from being down around
the engines, and he straightened up and wiped his
face with a piece of waste.

There was Albert on the dock.

141

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

*? arry ’’ saicJ ' * w * s h you’d carry me

What s the matter with you now?’

‘They’re only going to give us three days a weel
on the relief now. I just heard about it this moraine

I got to do something . 5 6

‘All right,’ said Harry. He had been thinkins
again. All right.’ s

That s good,’ said Albert. ‘I was afraid to go
home to see my old woman. She gave me hell this
noon like it was me had laid off the relief.’

What s the matter with your old woman?’ asked
Harry cheerfully. ‘Why don’t you smack her ? ’

You smack her,’ Albert said. ‘I’d like to hear
what she’d say. She’s some old woman to talk.’

Listen, Al,’ Harry told him. ‘Take my car and
this and go around to the Marine Hardware and
get six metric plugs like this one. Then go get a
20 -cent piece of ice and half a dozen mullets
, t two tms of coffee, four tins of corn-beef, two
loaves of bread, some sugar and two tins of con¬
densed milk. Stop at the Sinclair and tell them to
come down here and put in a hundred and fifty
gallons. Get back as soon as you can and change
the number two and the number four plugs in the
port engine counting back from the flywheel.
Tell them 111 be back to pay for the gas. They can

mC at Freddy ’ s - Gan you remember
airthat? Were taking a party out tarponing and
fishing them to-morrow.’

‘It’s too cold for tarpon,’Albert said.

142

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘The party says no/ ■ Harry told him.

‘Hadn’t I better get a dozen mullets ? 5 Albert
asked. ‘In case the jacks tear ’em up? There’s
plenty jacks now in those channels.’

‘Well, make it a dozen. But get back inside an
' hour and have the gas filled.’

‘Why you want to put in so much gas?’

‘We may be running early and late and not have
time to fill.’

‘What’s become of those Cubans that wanted to
be carried?’

‘Haven’t heard anything more from them.’

‘That was a good job.’

‘This is a good job too. Come on, get going.’

‘What am I going to be working for?’

‘Five bucks a day/ said Harry. ‘If you don’t

want it don’t take it.’

‘All right/ said Albert. ‘Which plugs was it?’

‘The number two and the number four counting
back from the flywheel/ Harry told him. Albert
nodded his head. T guess I can remember/ he said.
He got into the car and made a turn in it and went
off up the street.

From where Harry stood in the boat he could see
the brick and stone building and the front entrance
of the First State Trust and Savings Bank. It was
just a block down at the foot of the street. He
couldn’t see the side entrance. He looked at his
watch. It was a little after two o’clock. He shut the
engine hatch and climbed up on the dock. Well,

i43

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

now it comes off or it doesn’t, he thought I’ ve
done what I can now. I’ll go up and see Freddy
and then 111 come back and wait. He turned to the
right as he left the dock and walked down a back
street so that he would not pass the bank.

I 44

CHAPTER IX

In at Freddy’s he wanted to tell him about it
but he couldn’t. There wasn’t anybody in the bar
and he sat on a stool and wanted to tell him, but
it was impossible. As he was ready to tell him he
knew Freddy would not stand for it. In the old
days, maybe, yes, but not now. Maybe not in
the old days either. It wasn’t until he thought of
telling it to Freddy that he realized how bad it was.
I could stay right here, he thought, and there
wouldn’t be anything. I could stay right here and
have a few drinks and get hot and I wouldn’t be
in it. Except there’s my gun on the boat. But
nobody knows it’s mine except the old woman.
I got it in Cuba on a trip the time when I peddled
those others. Nobody knows I’ve got it. I could
stay here now and I’d be out of it. But what the
hell would they eat on? Where’s the money
coming from to keep Marie and the girls? I’ve got
no boat, no cash, I got no education. What can a
one-armed man work at? All I’ve got is my cojones
to peddle. I could stay right here and have say
five more drinks and it would be all over. It would
be too late then. I could just let it all slide and do
nothing.

‘Give me a drink,’ he said to Freddy.

‘Sure.’

k 145

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

I could sell the house and we could rent until I
got some kind of work. What kind of work? No
kind of work. I could go down to the bank and
squeal now and what would I get? Thanks. Sure.
I hanks. One bunch of Cuban government bastards
cost me my arm shooting at me with a load when
they had no need to and another bunch of U.S. ones
took my boat. Now I can give up my home and
get thanks. No thanks. The hell with it, he thought
I got no choice in it. S

He wanted to tell Freddy so there would be some
one knew what he was doing. But he couldn’t tell
him because- Freddy wouldn’t stand for it. He was
making good money now. There was nobody much
in the daytime, but every night the place was full
until two o’clock. Freddy wasn’t in a jam. He knew
he wouldn’t stand for it. I have to do it alone he
thought, with that poor bloody Albert. Christ’ he
looked hungrier than ever down at the dock. There
were Conchs that would starve to death before
they’d steal all right. Plenty in this town with their
bellies hollering right now. But they’d never make
a move. They’d just starve a little every day
They started starving when they were born: some
of them.

‘Listen, Freddy,’ he said. T want a couple of
quarts.’

‘Of what?’

‘Bacardi.’

‘O.K.’

146

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

Tull the corks, will you? You know I wanted to
charter her to take some Cubans over.’

That’s what you said. 5

‘I don’t know when they’ll be going. Maybe to¬
night. I haven’t heard.’

‘She’s ready to go any time. You’ve got a nice
night if you cross to-night.’

They said something about going fishing this
afternoon.’

‘She’s got tackle on board if the pelicans haven’t
stole it off her.’

‘It’s still there.’

‘Well, make a good trip,’ Freddy said.

Thanks. Give me another one, will you?’

‘Of what?’

‘Whisky.’

‘I thought you were drinking Bacardi.’

‘I’ll drink that if I get cold going across.’

‘You’ll cross with this breeze astern all the way,'
said Freddy. ‘I’d like to cross to-night.’

‘It’ll be a pretty night all right. Let me have
another, will you?’

Just then in came the tall tourist and his wife.

‘If it isn’t my dream man,’ she said, and sat
down on the stool beside Harry.

He took one look at her and stood up.

‘I’ll be back, Freddy,’ he said. ‘I’m going
down to the boat in case that party wants to
go fishing.’

‘Don ? t go,’ the wife said. ‘Please don’t go.’

H7

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
^‘You’re comical,’ Harry said to her and he went

srr r ° n * n

&adlev ad n y W T ld bC al0ne ’ She ™Jdte h °M?

KS"s r.rci'ss'E'S

would come by the house. Y ‘ haps hc

I48

CHAPTER X

Albert was on board the boat and the gas was
loaded.

Til start her up and try how those two cylinders
hit , 3 Harry said. ‘You got the things stowed ? 3

‘Yes . 3

‘Cut some baits then , 3

‘You want a wide bait ? 3

‘That’s right. For tarpon . 3

Albert was on the stern cutting baits and Harry
was at the wheel warming up the motors when he
heard a noise like a motor backfiring. He looked
down the street and saw a man come out of the
bank. He had a gun in his hand and he came
running. Then he was out of sight. Two more men
came out carrying leather brief cases and guns in
their hands and ran in the same direction. Harry
looked at Albert busy cutting baits. The fourth
man, the big one, came out of the bank door as he
watched, holding a Thompson gun in front of him,
and as he backed out of the door the siren in the
bank rose in a long breath-holding shriek and Harry
saw the gun muzzle jump-jump-jump-jump and
heard the bop-bop-bop-bop, small and hollow
sounding in the wail of the siren. The man turned
and ran, stopping to fire once more at the bank
door, arid as Albert stood up in the stern saying,

*49

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Christ, they’re robbing the bank. Christ, what can
we do?’ Harry heard tire Ford taxi coming out of
the side street and saw it careening up on to the
dock.

There were three Cubans in the back and one
beside the driver.

‘Where’s the boat?’ yelled one in Spanish.

‘There, you fool,’ said another.

‘That’s not the boat.’

‘That’s the captain.’

‘Come on. Come on for Christ sake.’

‘Get out,’ said the Cuban to the driver. ‘Get
your hands up.’

As the driver stood beside the car he put a knife
inside his belt and ripping it toward him cut the belt
and slit his pants almost to the knee. He yanked the
trousers down. ‘Stand still,’ he said. The two
Cubans with the valises tossed them into the cock¬
pit of the launch and they all came tumbling
aboard.

‘Geta going,’ said one. The big one with the
machine-gun poked it into Harry’s back.

‘Come on, Cappie,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Take it easy,’ said Harry. ‘Point that some place
else.’

‘Cast off those lines,’ the big one said. ‘You!’ to
Albert.

‘Wait a minute,’ Albert said. ‘Don’t start her.
These are the bank robbers. ’

The biggest Cuban turned and swung the Thomp-
150

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

son gun and held it on Albert. ‘Hey, don't! Don't!’
Albert said. ‘Don’t!’

The burst was so close to his chest that the bullets
whocked like three slaps. Albert slid down on his
knees, his eyes wide, his mouth open. He looked
like he was still trying to say, ‘Don’t!’

‘You don’t need no mate,’ the big Cuban said.
‘You one-armed son-of-a-bitch.’ Then in Spanish,
‘Cut those lines with that fish knife.’ And in
English,‘Come on, Let’s go’.

Then in Spanish, ‘Put a gun against his back!’
and in English, ‘Come on. Let’s go. I’ll blow your
head off.’

‘We’ll go,’ said Harry.

One of the Indian-looking Cubans was holding a
pistol against the side his bad arm was on. The
muzzle almost touched the hook.

As he swung her out, spinning the wheel with his
good arm, he looked astern to watch the clearance past
the piling, and saw Albert on his knees in the stern,
his head slipped sidewise now, in a pool of it. On
the dock was the Ford taxi, and the fat driver in his
underdrawers, his trousers around his ankles, his
hands above his head, his mouth open as wide as Al¬
bert’s. There was still no one coming down the street.

The pilings of the dock went past as she came out
of the basin and then he was in the channel passing
the lighthouse dock.

‘Come on. Hook her up,’ the big Cuban said.
‘Make some time.’

151

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Take that gun away,’ Harry said. He was
thinking, I could run her on Crawfish bar, but sure
sis hell that Cuban would plug me.

_ <Ma ! ce go,: said the big Cuban. Then, in
Spanish, Lie down flat, everybody. Keep the
;aptain covered.’ He lay down himself in the stern
nulling Albert flat down into the cockpit. The other
hree all lay flat in the cockpit now. Harry sat on
he steering seat. He was looking ahead steering
>ut the channel, past the opening into the sub-base
tow, with the notice board to yachts and the green
•linker, out away from the jetty, past the fort now
•ast the red blinker; he looked back. The big
mban had a green box of shells out of his pocket
nd was filling clips. The gun lay by his side and
e was filling clips without looking at them, filling
y feel, looking back over the stern. The others
rere all looking astern except the one that was
•atchmg him. This one, one of the two Indian-
•oking ones, motioned with his pistol for him to look
head. No boat had started after them yet. The
igines were running smoothly and they were
hng with the tide. He noticed the heavy slant
awards of the buoy he passed, with the current
wrhng at its base.

There are two speedboats that could catch us
arry was thinking. One, Ray’s, is running the
ail from Matecumbe. Where is the other? I saw
:r a couple of days ago on Ed. Taylor’s ways, he
lecked. That was the one I thought of having
r 52

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

Bee-lips hire. There’s two more, he remembered
now. One the State Road Department has up
along the keys. The other’s laid up in the Garrison
Bight. How far are we now? He looked back to
where the fort was well -astern, the red-brick
building of the old post office starting to show up
above the navy yard buildings and the yellow hotel
building now dominating the short skyline of the
town. There was the cove at the fort, and the
lighthouse showed above the houses that strung out
toward the big winter hotel. Four miles anyway, he
thought. There they come, he thought. Two white
fishing boats were rounding the breakwater and
heading out toward him. They can’t do ten, he
thought. It’s pitiful.

The Cubans were chattering in Spanish.

‘How fast you going, Cappie?’ the big one said,
looking back from the stem.

‘About twelve,’ Harry said.

‘What can those boats do?’

‘Maybe ten . 5

They were all watching them now, even the one
who was supposed to keep him, Harry, covered.
But what can I do? He thought Nothing to do
yet.

The two white boats got no, larger.

‘Look at that, Roberto,’ said the nice-speaking
one.

‘Where?’ ■

‘Look!’

J 53 '

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

A long way back, so far you could hardly see it
a little spout rose in the water. y See 11

one sald.^/fsTilly^ ^ ^ ^ pleasant -speakin ?

«ta? r m S?’ s sake ’ thc b «- fa “ d «“ -a. •*

Tour,’ thought Harry. ‘All of four.’

surfa^bm ’ht SCe u he tin 7 Spouts rise on the calm
surtace but he could not hear the shots.

wn^T, 00 5 are Pitifu1 ’’ he th ought. ‘They’re

worse. They’re comical.’ y e

tK^ a r S °7 ernment boat is there, Cappie?’ asked

‘What can she make?’

‘Maybe twelve.’

‘Then we’re O.K. now?’

Harry did not answer.

‘Aren’t we O.K. then?’

Harry said nothing. He was keeping the rising

starboard Tn 5 Y shoals .^ed almost abeam to
the reef ' 1 m ° re mmutes th ey would be past

^at’s the matter with you? Can’t you talk?’

What did you ask iu6? J

;is there anything can catch us now?’

Coast-guard plane,’ said Harry.

toJT’ the rtL td ? h ° n l wire before we <*meAn
, the pleasant-speaking one said.

A54

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘You didn’t cut the wireless, did you ? 5 Harry
asked.

‘You think the plane can get here ? 5

‘You got a chance of her until dark , 5 Harry said.

‘What do you think, Cappie? 5 asked Roberto, the
big-faced one.

Harry did not answer.

‘Come on, what do you think ? 5

‘What did you let that son of a bitch kill my mate
for ? 5 Harry said to the pleasant-speaking one who
was standing beside him now looking at the compass
course.

‘Shut up , 5 said Roberto. ‘Kill you, too . 5

‘How much money you get ? 5 Harry asked the
pleasant-speaking one.'

‘We don’t know. We haven’t counted it yet. It
isn’t ours, anyway. 5

‘I guess not, 5 said Harry. He was past the light
now and he put her on 225 0 , his regular course

for Havana.

‘I mean we do it not for ourselves. For a revolu¬
tionary organization.’

‘You kill my mate for that, too?’

‘I am very sorry, 5 said the boy. ‘I cannot tell
you how badly I feel about that. 5

‘Don’t try, 5 said Harry.

‘You see, 5 the boy said, speaking quietly, ‘this
man Roberto is bad. He is a good revolutionary
but a bad man. He kills so much in the time of
Machado he gets to like it. He thinks it is funny to

*55

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

kill He kills in a good cause, of course. The best

cause. He looked back at Roberto who sat nowin
one of the fishing chairs in the stern, the Thompson
gun across his lap, looking back at the white boats
S WCre ’ Harr y saw > m uch smaller now

theTern. y ° U g0t t0 drink? ’ R ° bert ° Called from.

‘Nothing,’ Harry said.

T drink my own, then,’ Roberto said. One of the
other Cubans lay on one of the seats built over the
gas tanks. He looked seasick already. The other
was obviously seasick too, but still sitting up
Looking back, Harry saw a lead-coloured boat
bo T ts dear ° f the fort ’ c °ming up on the two white

■ShSpi,’Llt 0 , COaS * Piard - brat >' b ' ‘Wht.

spolen toyt£d !CaP,ane

on^L da r k “ halfan hour >’ Harry said. He setded
KilHng me?" 5 ^ <What Y ° U fi § Ure ° n doin S ?

cwl° n ’ t Waat !°’’ the b °y said. ‘I hate killing.’

vin^fd°l d0m f’ R ° bert0 ’ who sat ™w with a
pmt of whisky m his hand asked. ‘Making friends

captai^tabk? What *° do? Eat a. the

cou25‘ T* Wl ’" 1 ’’ Ba 7 r Said ,0 ,he b °y. 'See the

fro mt he s Tna7d“t?A Staight “ Cd

156

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘Let me have a drink/ Harry said' to Roberto.
‘There’s your coast-guard boat but she can’t catch
us.’

He had abandoned anger, hatred and any dignity
as luxuries, now, and had started to plan.

‘Sure,’ said Roberto. ‘She can’t catch us. Look
at those seasick babies. What you say? You want a
drink? You got any other last wishes, Cappie?’

‘You’re some kidder,’ Harry said. He took a long
drink.

‘Go easy!’ Roberto protested. ‘That’s all there
is.’

‘I got some more,’ Harry told him. ‘I was just

kidding you.’

‘Don’t kid me,’ said Roberto suspiciously.

‘Why should I try?’

‘What you got?’

‘Bacardi.’

‘Bring it out.’

‘Take it easy,’ Harry said. ‘Why do you get so

tough?’

He stepped over Albert’s body as he walked
forward. As he came to the wheel he looked at the
compass. The boy was about twenty-five degrees off
and the compass dial was swinging. He’s no sailor,
Harry thought. That gives me more time. Look at
the wake.

The wake ran in two bubbling curves toward
where the light, astern now, showed brown, conical
and thinly latticed on the horizon. The boats were

i57

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

almost out of sight. He could just see a blur where
the wireless masts of the town were. The engines
were running smoothly. Harry put his head below
and reached for one of the bottles of Bacardi. He
went aft with it. At the stern he took a drink then
landed the bottle to Roberto. Standing, he looked
iown at Albert and he felt sick inside. The Door
lungry bastard, he thought.

‘What’s the matter? He scare you?’ the big-faced
Cuban asked. &

‘What you say we put him over?’ Harry said

No sense to carry him/

said Roberto. ‘You got good sense.’
lake him under the arms,’said Harry. ‘I’ll take
the legs.’ Roberto laid the Thompson gun down on
the wide stern and leaning down lifted the body
oy the shoulders. 1

‘You know the heaviest thing in the world is a

4«%p« ,said ' You cver lm a dead man

woman?’ Said Hany * ' Y ° U CVer lift a bi & dead

‘Youv/Zt PU u d „ the , b l ° dy U P on to the stern.
You re a tough fellow,’ he said. ‘What do you say
we have a drink?’ you say

Go ahead,’ said Harry.

Tisten Pm sorry I killed him,’ Roberto said.
When I kill you I feel worse.’

Cut out talking that way,’ Harry said. ‘What
do you want to talk that way for?’

158

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘Come on,’ said Roberto. ‘Over he goes.’

As they leaned over and slid the body up and
over the stem, Harry kicked the machine-gun over
the edge. It splashed at the same time Albert did,
but while Albert turned over twice in the white,
churned, bubbling back-suction of the propeller
wash before sinking, the gun went straight down.

‘That’s better, eh?’ Roberto said. ‘Make it ship¬
shape.’ Then as he saw the gun was gone, ‘Where
is it? What did you do with it?’

‘With what?’

‘The ametralladoraV going into Spanish in excite¬
ment.

‘The what?’

‘You know what.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘You knocked it off the stern. Now I’ll kill you,
now .’

‘Take it easy,’ said Harry. ‘What the hell you
going to kill me about?’

‘Give me a gun,’ Roberto said to one of the sea¬
sick Cubans in Spanish. ‘Give me a gun quick!’

Harry stood there, never having felt so tall, never
having felt so wide, feeling the sweat trickle from
under his armpits, feeling it go down his flanks.

‘You kill too much,’ he heard the seasick Cuban
say in Spanish. ‘You kill the mate. Now you want
to kill the captain. Who’s going to get us across?’

‘Leave him alone,’ said the other. ‘Kill him when
we get over.’

i59

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘He knocked the machine-gun overboard 5
Roberto said. 5

‘We got the money. What you want a machine-
gun for now? There’s plenty of machine-guns in
Cuba.’

‘I tell you, you make a mistake if you don’t kill
him now, I tell you. Give me a gun.’

‘Oh, shut up. You’re drunk. Every time you’re
drunk you want to kill somebody.’

‘Have a drink,’ said Harry looking out across
the grey swell of the Gulf Stream where the round
red sun was just touching the water. ‘Watch that.
When she goes all the way under it’ll turn bright
green.’

‘The hell with that,’ said the big-faced Cuban.
‘You think you got away with something.’

‘I’ll get you another gun,’ said Harry. ‘They only
cost^ forty-five dollars in Cuba. Take it easy.
You re all right now. There ain’t any coast-guard
plane going to come now.’

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Roberto said, looking him
over. ‘You did that on purpose. That’s why you
got me to lift on that.’

‘You don’t want to kill me,’ Harry said. ‘Who’s
going to take you across?’

‘I ought to kill you now.’

Take it easy,’ said Harry. ‘I’m going to look at
the engines.’

He opened the hatch, got down in, screwed down
the grease cups on the two stuffing boxes, felt the

160

mORGAN-WINTER

motors, and with his hand touched the butt of the
Thompson gun. Not yet, he thought. No, better
not yet. Christ, that was lucky. What the hell

difference does it make to Albert when he’s dead?
Saves his old woman to bury him. That big-faced
bastard. That big-faced murdering bastard. Christ,
Fd like to take him now. But I better wait.

He stood up, climbed out and shut the hatch.

‘How you doing?’ he said to Roberto. He put his
hand on the fat shoulder. The big-faced Cuban
looked at him and did not say anything.

‘Did you see it turn green ? 5 Hany asked.

‘The hell with you, 5 Roberto said. He was drunk
but he was suspicious, and, like an animal, he knew
how wrong something had gone.

‘Let me take her a while, 5 Harry said to the boy
at the wheel. ‘What’s your name? 5

‘You can call me Emilio, 5 said the boy.

‘Go below and you’ll find something to eat, 5
Harry said. ‘There’s bread and corn-beef. Make
coffee if you want. 5

T don’t want any . 5

‘Fll make some later, 5 Harry said. He sat at the
wheel, the binnacle light on now, holding her on
the point easily in the light following sea, looking
out at the night coming on the water. He had no
running lights on.

It would be a pretty night to cross, he thought,
a pretty night. Soon as the last of that afterglow is
gone I’ve got to work her east. If I don’t, we’ll

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

sight the glare of Havana in another hour. In two
anyway. Soon as he sees the glare it may occur to
that son of a bitch to kill me. That was lucky getting
rid of that gun. Damn, that was lucky. Wonder
what that Marie’s having for supper. I guess she’s
plenty worried. I guess she’s too worried to eat
Wonder how much money those bastards have got'
Funny they don’t count it. If that ain’t a hell of a
way to raise money for a revolution. Cubans are a
hell of a people.

That’s a mean boy, that Roberto. I’ll get him
to-night. I get him no matter how the rest of it
comes out. That won’t help that poor damned
Albert though. It made me feel bad to dump him
like that. I don t know what made me think of it.

He lit a cigarette and smoked in the dark.

I’m doing all right, he thought. I’m doing better
than I expected. The kid is a kind of nice kid.
I wish I could get those other two on the same side.

I wish there was some way to bunch them. Well
111 have to do the best I can. Easier I can maW
them take it beforehand the better. Smoother
everything goes the better.

‘Do you want a sandwich?’ the boy asked.

Thanks, said Harry. ‘You give one to your
partner?’ ■

‘He’s drinking. He won’t eat,’ the boy said.

What about the others? 5

‘Seasick/ the boy said,

‘It’s a nice night to cross,’ Harry said. He

162

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

noticed the boy did not watch the compass so he
kept letting her go off to the east.

Td enjoy it/ the boy said. c If it wasn’t for your
mate.’

£ He was a good fellow/ said Harry. ‘Did any
one get hurt at the bank?’

‘The lawyer. What was his name, Simmons.’

‘Get killed?’

‘I think so.’

So, thought Harry. Mr. Ree-lips. What the hell
did he expect? How could he have thought he
wouldn’t get it? That comes from playing at being
tough. That comes from being too smart too often.
Mr. Bee-lips. Good-bye, Mr. Bee-lips.

‘How he come to get killed?’

‘I guess you can imagine,’ the boy said. ‘That’s
very different from your mate. I feel badly about
that. You know he doesn’t mean to do wrong.
It’s just what that phase of the revolution has done
to him.’

‘I guess he’s probably a good fellow/ Harry said,
and thought, Listen to what my mouth says. God
damn it, my mouth will say anything. But I got to
try to make a friend of this boy in case .

‘What kind of revolution do you make now?’ he
asked.

‘We are the only true revolutionary party/ the
boy said. ‘We want to do away with all the old
politicians, with all the American imperialism that
strangles us, with the tyranny of the army. We want

163

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

to start clean and give every man a chance. We
want to end the slavery of the guajiros , you know
the peasants, and divide the big sugar estates among
the people that work them. But we are not
Communists.’

Harry looked up from the compass card at him.

‘How you coming on?’ he asked.

‘We just raise money now for the fight,’ the boy
said. ‘To do that we have to use means that later
we would never use. Also we have to use people we
would not employ later. But the end is worth the
means. They had to do the same thing in Russia.
Stalin was a sort of brigand for many years before
the revolution.’

He s a radical, Harry thought. That’s what he is
a radical. ’

T guess you’ve got a good programme,’ he said,
it you re out to help the working man. I was out on
strike plenty times in the old days when we had the
cigar factories in Key West. I’d have been glad
to do whatever I could if I’d known what kind of
outfit you were . 9

‘Lots of people would help us,’ the boy said.
But because of the state the movement is in at
present we can’t trust people. I regret the necessity
tor the present phase very much. I hate terrorism.

1 also feel very badly about the methods for raising
toe necessary money. But there is no choice. You
do not know how bad things are in Cuba.’

‘I guess' they’re plenty bad,’ Harry said.

,164

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘You can’t know how bad they are. There is an
absolutely murderous tyranny that extends ■ over
every little village in the country. Three people
cannot be together on the street. Cuba has no
foreign enemies and doesn’t need any army, but
she has an army of twenty-five thousand now, and
the army, from the corporals up, suck the blood
from the nation. Everyone, even the private
soldiers, are out to make their fortunes. Now they
have a military reserve with every kind of crook,
bully and informer of the old days of Machado in it,
and they take anything the army does not bother
with. We have to get rid of the army before anything
can start. Before we were ruled by clubs. Now we
are ruled by rifles, pistols, machine-guns, and
bayonets.’

Tt sounds bad , 3 Harry said, steering, and letting

her go off to the eastward.

‘You cannot realize how bad it is, 3 - the boy said.
T love my poor country and I would do anything,
anything to free it from this tyranny we have now.
I do things I hate. But I would do things I hate a
thousand times more. 3

I want a drink, Harry was thinking. What the

hell do I care about his revolution. F- his

revolution. To help the working man he robs a bank
and kills a fellow works with him and then kills that
poor damned Albert that never did any harm.
That’s a working man he kills. He never thinks of
that. With a family. It’s the Cubans run Cuba.

165

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

TJey all double cross each other. They sell each
other out. They get what they deserve 7 The heh
wxth their revolutions. All I got to do is to make a
mng for my family and I can’t do that. Then he
tells me about his revolution. The hell with his
revolution. nis

‘lT St l 5ad ’ - aU right ’’ he said to th e boy
drink.* hC Whed a mmute ’ wiI1 y° u? 1 want to get a

Sure, said the boy. ‘How should I steer 3 ’

I wo twenty-five,’ Harry said.

It was dark now and there was quite a swell this
far °u, m the Gulf Stream. He paied the Two set
sick Cubans lying out on the seats and went aft to
where Roberto sat in the fishing chair. The water

whh r v m f Pa - t th u b ° at in the darL Roberto sat

turned feet ,™. the other Ashing chair that was
turned toward him.

Jet me have some of that,’ Harry said to him.
is nfine*’ ^ S£UC ^ the big-faced man thickly. ‘This

, ^ght, said Harry, and went forward to get

nght arm > he pulled the cork
AaMFreddy had drawn and reinserted and took a

No^ene’ “ ^ *>' ^d tO himself.

The Ke "° W a ¥*“' b °T’ ! "Poke his piece,

sidt basta J d , dnml[ ; the other two sea-

sick, it might as well be now.

166

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

He took another drink and the Bacardi warmed
and helped him but he felt cold and hollow all
around his stomach still. His whole insides were cold.

‘Want a drink?’ he asked the boy at the wheel.

‘No, thanks,’ the boy said. ‘I don’t drink.’ Harry
could see him smile in the binnacle light. He was a
nice-looking boy all right. Pleasant talking, too.

‘I’ll take one,’ he said. He swallowed a big one
but it could not warm the dank cold part that had
spread from his stomach to all over the inside of his
chest now. He put the botde down on the cockpit
floor.

‘Keep her on that course,’ he said to the boy.
‘I’m going to have a look at the motors.’

He opened the hatch and stepped down. Then
locked the hatch up with a long hook that set into
a hole in the flooring. He stooped over the motors,
with his one hand felt the water manifold, the
cylinders, and put his hand on the stuffing boxes.
He tightened the two grease cups a turn and a half
each. Quit stalling, he said to himself. Come on,
quit stalling. Where’re your balls now? Under my
chin, I guess, he thought.

He looked out of the hatch. He could almost
touch the two seats over the gas tanks where the
seasick men lay. The boy’s back was toward him,
sitting on the high stool, outlined clearly by the
binnacle light. Turning, he could see Roberto
sprawled in the chair in the stern, silhouetted against
the dark water.

I67

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Twenty-one to a clip is four bursts of five at the
most, he thought. I got to be light-fingered. AH
right. Come on. Quit stalling, you gutless wonder
Christ, what I’d give for another one. Well, there
isn’t any other one now. He reached his left hand
up, unhooked the length of belting, put his hand
around the trigger guard, pushed the safety all the
way over with his thumb and pulled the gun out.
Squatting in the engine pit he sighted carefully on
the back of the boy’s head where it outlined against
the light from the binnacle.

The gun made a big flame in the dark and the
shells ratded against the lifted hatch and on to the
engine. Before the slump of the boy’s body fell from
the stool he had turned and shot into the figure on
the left bunk, holding the jerking, flame-stabbing
gun almost against the man, so close he could smell
it burn his coat; then swung to put a burst into the
other bunk where the man was sitting up, tugging
at his pistol. He crouched low now and looked
astern. _ The big-faced man was gone out of the
chair. He could see both chairs silhouetted. Behind
him the boy lay still. There wasn’t any doubt about
him. On one bunk a man was flopping. On the
other, he could see with the corner of his eye, a man
lay half over the gunwale, fallen over on his face.

_ Harry was trying to locate the big-faced man in
me dark, ihe boat was going in a circle now and
the cockpit lightened a little. He held his breath
and looked. That must be him where it was a little

168

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER”

darker on the floor in the corner. He watched ii
and it moved a little. That was him.

The man was crawling toward him. No, toward
the man who lay half overboard. He was after h is
gun. Crouching low, Harry watched him move
until he was absolutely sure. Then he gave him a
burst. The gun lighted him on hands and knees,
and, as the flame and the bot-bot-bot-bot stopped,
he heard him flopping heavily.

c You son of a bitch, 5 said Harry. c You big-faced
murdering bastard. 5

All the cold was gone from around his heart now
and he had the old hollow, singing feeling and ht
crouched low down and felt under the square
wood-crated gas tank for another clip to put ir
the gun. He got the clip, but his hand was cold¬
drying wet.

Hit the tank, he said to himself. Pve got to cu
the engines. I don’t know where that tank cuts.

He pressed the curved lever, dropped the empt)
clip, shoved in the fresh one, and climbed up anc
out of the cockpit.

As he stood up, holding the Thompson gun in hi
left hand, looking around before shutting the hatcl
with the hook on his right arm, the Cuban who hac
lain on the port bunk and had been shot three time
through the left shoulder, two shots going into tiu
gas tank, sat up, took careful aim, and shot him ii
the belly.'

Harry sat down in a backward lurch. He felt a

169

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

though he had been struck in the abdomen with a
club. His back was against one of the iron-pipe
supports of the fishing chairs and while the Cuban
shot at him again and splintered the fishing chair
above his head, he reached down, found the
Thompson gun, raised it carefully, holding the for¬
ward grip with the hook and rattled half of the fresh
clip into the man who sat leaning forward calmly
shooting at him from the seat. The man was down
on the seat in a heap and Harry felt around on the
cockpit floor until he could find the big-faced man
who lay face down, felt for his head with the hook
on his bad arm, hooked it around, then put the
muzzle of the gun against the head and touched
the trigger. Touching the head, the gun made a
noise like hitting a pumpkin with a club. Harry put

down the gun and lay on his side on the cockpit

floor. r

I m a son of a bitch,’ he said, his lips against the
planking. I m a gone son of a bitch now. I got to

cut the engines or we’ll all bum up, he thought.
I got a chance still. I got a kind of a chance. Jesus
Christ. One thing to spoil it. One thing to go
wrong. God damn it. Oh, God damn that Cuban
bastard. Who’d have thought I hadn’t got him?

Tie got on his hands and knees and letting one
side of the hatch over the engines slam down,
crawled over it forward to where the steering stool
was. He pulled up on it, surprised to find how well
he could move, then suddenly feeling faint and weak

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

as he stood erect, he leaned forward with his bad

arm resting on the compass and cut the two
switches. The engines were quiet and he could
hear the water against her sides. There was no other
sound. She swung into the trough of the little sea
the North wind had raised and began to roll.

He hung against the wheel, then eased himself on
to the steering stool, leaning against the chart table.
He could feel the strength drain out of him in a
steady faint nausea. He opened his shirt with his
good hand and felt the hole with the base of the
palm of his hand, then fingered it. There was very
little bleeding. All inside, he thought. I better lie
down and give it a chance to quiet.

The moon was up now and he could see what was
in the cockpit.

Some mess, he thought, some hell of a mess.
Better get down before I fall down, he thought
and he lowered himself down to the cockpit floor.
He lay on his side and then, as the boat rolled,

the moonlight came in and he could see everything
in the cockpit clearly.

It’s crowded, he thought. That’s what it is, it’s

crowded. Then, he thought, I wonder what shell
do. I wonder what Marie will do? Maybe they’ll
pay her the rewards. God damn that Cuban. Shell
get along, I guess. She’s a smart woman. I guess
we would all have gotten along. I guess' it was nuts
all right. I guess I bit off too much more than T
could chew. I shouldn’t have tried it. I had it ail

* 7 *

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

5 ppcn U ed.*°X w^couM^’" ‘‘T h °“ »

Marie. Plenty money on this boat!"? don’t^
know how much. Anybody be OK i?

sTe^Td Wh f llaPPenCd ‘ C ^ U w °nder^what
a job in •» fl ° n 1 knOW * 1 gucss 1 should have got

qS tryinf^r- a K° n ° f ^f cthing - * should have
4uu trying to go in boats. There’s m hr,

™U S Tf h°V! S a T m ° rC ' If the bitch wouldnh only
roll. If she’d only quit rolling, r can feel Tl

sloppmg back and forth inside Me Mr R

^ Albert. Everybody thlfhad to do St
Some ba f ta , rds , t00 ; II must be an unlucky business!

ought to do [ busmess - I guess what a man like me
gftt to do is run something like a filling station

COU u ldn 4 run no filling station. Marie S
run someth^ She’s too old to peddle her W

tn fair 1 Wish tblS bltcb wouldn’t roll. I’ll j ust have
T , ke 11 e f s y- 1 got to take it as easy as I can
hey say if you don’t drink water and lav still’

hI iZT Cia t if yOU wlr tllL

coSpit at What ^ moonIi ght showed in the

Ta^itistthir 6 1° Cl r m her Up ’ he thought

rve votmli, , S Wbat 1 Sot to do. Take it easy.

i. ve got to take it as easv T t? ■ ■

a chance. If you u^tS 1 T* 1 Y e sort of

water. y ^ stI mid don t drink any

1.72

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

He lay on his back and tried to breathe steadily.
The launch rolled in the Gulf Stream swell and
Harry Morgan lay on his back in the cockpit. At
first he tried to brace himself against the roll with
his good hand. Then he lay quietly and took it.

>73

CHAPTER XI

The next morning in Key West Richard Gordon was
on his way home from a visit to Freddy’s Bar where
he had gone to ask about the bank robbery. Riding
his bicycle, he passed a heavy-set, big, blue-eyed
woman, with bleached-blonde hair showing under
her old man’s felt hat, hurrying across the road
her eyes red from crying. Look at that big ox, he
thought. What do you suppose a woman like that
thinks about? What do you suppose she does in bed?
How does her husband feel about her when she gets
that size. Who do you suppose he runs around with
m this town? Wasn’t she an appalling looking
woman? Like a battleship. Terrific.

He was almost home now. He left his bicycle on
the front porch and went in the hallway, closing the
front door the termites had tunnelled and riddled.

‘What did you find out, Dick?’ his wife called
from the kitchen.

Don t talk to me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to work.
I have it all in my head.’

That s fine, she said. ‘I’ll leave you alone.’
^He sat down at the big table in the front room.
He was writing a novel about a strike in a textile
factory. In to-day’s chapter he was going to use the
big woman with the tear-reddened eyes he had just
seen on the way home. Her husband when he came

174

HARRY' MORGAN — WINTER

home at night hated her, hated the way she had
coarsened and grown heavy, was repelled by her
bleached hair, her too big breasts, her lack of sym¬
pathy with his. work as an organizer. He would
compare her to the young, firm-breasted, full¬
lipped little Jewess that had spoken at the meeting
that evening. It was good. It was, it could be easily,
terrific, and it was true. He had seen, in a flash of
perception, the whole inner life of that type of
woman.

Her early indifference to her husband’s caresses.
Her desire for children and security. Her lack of
sympathy with her husband’s aims. Her sad
attempts to simulate an interest in the sexual act
that had become actually repugnant to her. It
would be a fine chapter.

The woman he had seen was Harry Morgan’s
wife, Marie, on her way home from the sheriff’s

I?5

C H.A PTER XII

Freddy Wallace’s boat, the Queen Conch , thirty
four feet long, with a V number out of Tampa, wa
painted white; the forward deck was painted a colon
called Frolic green and the inside of the cockpit wa
painted Frolic green. The top of the house wa
painted the same colour. Her name and home port
Key West, Fla., were painted in black across he:
stern. She was not equipped with outriggers ant
had no mast. She was equipped with glass wind
shields, one of which, that forward of the wheel
was broken. There were a number of fresh, wood
splintered holes in the newly painted planking o
her hull. Splintered patches could be seen on botl
sides of her hull about a foot below the gunwale anc
a little forward of the centre of the cockpit. Thert
was another group of these splintered places almosi
at the water line on the starboard side of the huf
opposite the aft stanchion that supported her house
or awning. From the lower of these something
dark had dripped and hung in ropy lines againsi
the new paint of her hull.

She drifted broadside to the gentle north wind
about ten miles outside of the north-bound tanker
lanes, gay looking in her fresh white and green,
against the dark, blue Gulf Stream water. There
were patches of sun-yellowed Sargasso weed floating

176

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

in the water near her that passed her slowly in the
current going to the north and east, while the wind
overcame some of the launch’s drift as it set her
steadily farther out into the stream. There was no
sign of life on her although the body of a man
showed, rather inflated looking, above the gunwale,
lying on a bench over the port gasoline tank and,
from the long seat alongside the starboard gunwale,
a man seemed to be leaning over to dip his hand into
the sea. His head and arms were in the sun and at
the point where his fingers almost touched the water,
there was a school of small fish, about two inches
long, oval-shaped, golden-coloured, with faint
purple stripes, that had deserted the gulf weed to
take shelter in the shade the bottom of the drifting
launch made in the water, and each time anything
dripped down into the sea, these fish rushed at the
drop and pushed and milled until it was gone. Two
grey sucker fish about eighteen inches long, swam
round and round the boat in the shadow in the
water, their slit mouths on the tops of their heads
opening and shutting; but they did not seem to com¬
prehend the regularity of the drip the small fish fed
on and were as likely to be on the far side of the
launch when the drop fell, as near it. They had
long since pulled away the ropy, carmine clots and
threads that trailed in the water from the lowest
splintered holes, shaking their ugly, sucker-topped
heads and their elongated, tapering, thin-tailed
bodies as they pulled. They were reluctant now

177

M

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

to leave a place where they had fed so well and
unexpectedly.

Inside the cockpit of the launch there were three
other men. One, dead, lay on his back where he had
fallen below the steering stool. Another, dead lay
humped big against the scupper by the starboard
aft stanchion. The third, still alive, but long out of
his head, lay on his side with his head on his arm.

The bilge of the launch was full of gasoline and
when she rolled at all this made a sloshing sound
The man, Harry Morgan, believed this sound was in
his own belly and it seemed to him now that his belly
was big as a lake and that it sloshed on both shores at
once. That was because he was on his back now
with his knees drawn up and his head back. The
water of the lake that was his belly was very cold; so
cold that when he stepped into its edge it numbed
him, and he was extremely cold now and everything
tasted of gasoline as though he had been sucking on a
hose to syphon a tank. He knew there was no tank
although he could feel a cold rubber hose that seemed
to have entered his mouth and now was coiled, big,
cold, and heavy all down through him. Each time
he took a breath the hose coiled colder and firmer in
his lower abdomen and he could feel it like a big,
smooth-moving snake in there, above the sloshing
of the lake. He was afraid of it, but although it was
m him, it seemed a vast distance away and what he
minded, now, was the cold.

The cold was all through him, an aching cold that
178

■ HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

would not numb away, and he lay quietly now and
felt it. For a time he had thought that if he could
pull himself up over himself it would warm him like
a blanket, and he thought for a while that he had
gotten himself pulled up and he had started to warm.
But that warmth was really only the hemorrhage
produced by raising his knees up; and as the warmth
faded he knew now that you could not pull yourself
up over yourself and there was nothing to do about
the cold but take it. He lay there, trying hard in all
of him not to die long after he could not think. He
was in the shadow now, as the boat drifted, and it
was colder all the time.

The launch had been drifting since ten o’clock of
the night before and it was now getting late in the
afternoon. There was nothing else in sight across the
surface of the Gulf Stream but the gulf weed, a few
pink, inflated, membranous bubbles of Portuguese
men-of-war cocked jauntily on the surface, and the
distant smoke of a loaded tanker bound north from
Tampico.

*79

C H A P T E R XIII

‘Well?’ Richard Gordon said to his wife.

‘You have lipstick on your shirt,’ she said. ‘And
over your ear.’ Q

‘What about this?’

‘What about what?’

‘What about finding you lying on the couch wiri,
that drunken slob?’ Wlth

‘You did not.’

‘Where did I find you?’

‘You found us sitting on the couch.’

‘In the dark.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘At the Bradleys’.’

t <Yes >’ she said. ‘I know. Don’t come near me
You reek of that woman.’

What do you reek of?’

‘Nothing. I’ve been sitting, talking to a friend.’
Did you kiss him?’

‘No.’

‘Did he kiss you?’

‘Yes, I liked it.’

‘You bitch.’

‘Ifyou call me that I’ll leave you.’

‘You bitch.’

All right, she said. *It*s over. If you weren’t so
conceited and I weren’t so good to you, you’d have

seen it was over a long time ago/

180

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘You bitch . 5

‘No , 5 she said. Tm not a bitch. Pve tried to be a
good wife, but you 5 re as selfish and conceited as a
barnyard rooster. Always crowing, “Look what I’ve
done. Look how I’ve made you happy. Now run
along and cackle . 55 Well, you don’t make me happy
and I’m sick of you. I’m through cackling . 5

‘You shouldn’t cackle. You never produced any¬
thing to cackle about . 5

‘Whose fault was that? Didn’t I want children?
But we never could afford them. But we could
afford to go to the Cap d’Antibes to swim and to
Switzerland to ski. We can afford to come down
here to Key West. I’m sick of you. I dislike you.
This Bradley woman to-day was the last straw . 5

‘Oh, leave her out of it . 5

‘You coming home with lipstick all over you.
Couldn’t you even wash? There’s some on your
forehead, too . 5

‘You kissed that drunken twirp . 5

‘No, I didn’t.' But I would have if I’d known what
you were doing . 5

‘Why did you let him kiss you ? 5

‘I was furious at you. We waited and waited and
waited. You never came near me. You went off
with that woman and stayed for hours. John
brought me home . 5

‘Oh, John, is it?’

‘Yes, John. John. John . 5 .

‘And what’s his last'name? Thomas ? 5

181 -

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘His name is MacWalsey.’

‘Why don’t you spell it?’

I can t, she said, and laughed. But it was the
last time she laughed. ‘Don’t think it’s all right be¬
cause I laugh,’ she said, tears in her eyes, her line
working. ‘It’s not all right. This isn’t just an ordi¬
nary row. Its oyer. I don’t hate you. It isn’t
y io ent. I just dislike you. I dislike you thoroughly
and I’m through with you.’ 5 y

‘All right,’ he said.

‘No Not all right. All over. Don’t you under-
standr

‘I guess so.’

‘Don’t guess.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Helen.’

‘So I’m melodramatic, am I? Well, I’m not. I’m
through with you.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I won’t say it again.’

‘What are you going to do?’

wlhey°’ l t kn ° W yCt 1 may manT J ° hn Mac '

‘You will not.’

Twill if I wish.’

‘He wouldn’t marry you.’

Oh, yes, he will. He asked me to marry him this
afternoon.

Richard Gordon said nothing. A hollow had
come m him where his heart had been, and every¬
thing he heard, or said, seemed to be overheard.

182

HARRY MORGAN' — WINTER

6 He asked you what?’ he said, his voice coming
from a long way away.

‘To marry him. 5

‘Why? 5 ■*

‘Because he loves me. Because he wants me to
live with him. He makes enough money to support
me. 5

‘You’re married to me. 5

‘Not really. Not in the church. You wouldn’t
marry me in the church and it broke my poor
mother’s heart as you well know. 1 was so senti¬
mental about you I’d break anyone’s heart for you.
My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart,
too. It’s broken and gone. Everything I believed in
and everything I cared about I left for you because
you were so wonderful and you loved me so much
that love was all that mattered. Love was the
greatest thing, wasn’t it? Love was what we had
that no one else had or could ever have? And you
were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your
partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is
just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make
me come around because you were afraid to have a
baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until
I’m deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror
that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed
up. It’s half catheters and half whirling douches. I
know about love. Love always hangs up behind the
bath-room door. It smells like lysol. To hell with
love. Love is you making me happy and the going

183

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake
all night afraid to say my prayers even because I
know I have no right to any more. Love is all the
dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably
got out of some books. All right. I’m through with
you and I’m through with love. Your kind of pick-
nose love. You writer.’

‘You little mick slut.’

‘Don’t call me names. I know the word for von ’

‘All right.’

‘No, not all right. All wrong and wrong again.
If you were just a good writer I could stand for all
the rest of it maybe. But I’ve seen you bitter,
jealous, changing your politics to suit the fashion^
sucking up to people s faces and talking about them
behind their backs. I’ve seen you until I’m sick of
you. Then that dirty rich bitch of a Bradley woman
to-day. Oh, I’m sick of it. I’ve tried to take care of
you and humour you and look after you and cook for
you and keep quiet when you wanted and cheerful
when you wanted and give you your little explosions
and pretend it made me happy, and put up with
your rages and jealousies and your; meannesses and
now I > m through.. 5

‘So now you want to start again with a drunken
professor?’

He s a man. He’s kind and he’s charitable and he
makes you feel comfortable and we come from the
same thing and we have values that you’ll never
have. He’s like my father was.’

.184 ...

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘He's a drunk. 5

‘He drinks. But so did my father. And my father
wore wool socks and put his feet in them up on a
chair and read the paper in the evening. And when
we had croup he took care of us. He was a boiler
maker and his hands were all broken and he liked to
fight when he drank, and he could fight when he was
sober. He went to mass because my mother wanted
him to and he did his Easter duty for her and for
Our Lord, but mostly for her, and he was a good
union man and if he ever went with another woman
she never knew it. 5

Til bet he went with plenty. 5

‘Maybe he did, but if he did he told the priest,
not her, and if he did it was because he couldn't help
it and he was sorry and repented of it. He didn't do
it out of curiosity, or from barnyard pride, or to tell
his wife what a great man he was. If he did it was
because my mother was away with us kids for the
summer, and he was out with the boys and got
drunk. He was a man. 5

‘You ought to be a writer and write about him.'

Td be a better writer than you. And John Mac-
Walsey is a good man. That's what you're not. You
couldn't be. No matter what your politics or your
religion.’

■ T haven't any religion.' ■

‘Neither have I. 'But I had one' once and I'm
going to have one again. And you won't be there to
take it away. Like you've taken away everything else.'

185

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘No.’

,‘ N °; You can be in bed with some rich woman
like Helene Bradley. How did she like you? Did
she think you were wonderful?’

Looking at her sad, angry face, pretty with crying
the lips swollen freshly like something after rain
her curly dark hair wild about her face, Richard
Gordon gave her up, then, finally:

‘And you don’t love me any more?’

‘I hate the word even.’

‘All right,’ he said, and slapped her hard and
suddenly across the face.

She cried now from actual pain, not anger, her
face down on the table.

|You didn’t need to do that,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes, I did,’ he said. ‘You know an awful lot,
but you don’t know how much I needed to do that.’’

That afternoon she had not seen him as the door opened.
She had not seen anything but the white ceiling with its
cake-frosting modelling of cupids, doves and scroll work that
the light from the open door suddenly made clear.

Richard Gordon had turned his head and seen him , stand¬
ing heavy and bearded in the doorway.

Don t stop' HiUne had said. ‘Please don’t stop.’ Her
bright hair was spread over the pillow.

But Rickard Gordon had stopped and his headyvas still
turned, staring.

Don't mind him. Don't mind anything. Don't you see
you can t stop now?' the woman had said in desperate
urgency.

186

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

The bearded man had closed the door softly. He was
smiling.

c What's the matter, darling?" Helene Bradley had asked,
now in the darkness again.

C I must go.’

‘Don* tyou seeyou can" t go?"

c That man - 5

c That"s only Tommy," Helene had said. 6 He knows all
about these things. Don"t mind him. Come on, darling.
Please do."

‘/ can"t."

‘Tou must," Helene had said. He could feel her shaking
and her head on his shoulder was trembling. c My God,
don" t you know anything? Haven" t you any regard for a
woman?"

6 1 have to go," said Richard Gordon.

In the darkness he had felt the slap across his face that
lighted flashes of light in his eyeballs. Then there was
another slap. Across his mouth this time.

6 So that"s the kind of man you are," she had said to him.
c / thoughtyou were a man of the world. Get out of here."

That was this afternoon. That was how it had finished
at the Bradleys".

Now his wife sat with her head forward on her
hands that rested on the table and neither of them
said anything. Richard Gordon could hear the clock
ticking and he felt as hollow as the room was quiet.
After a while his wife said without looking at him:
Tm sorry it happened. But you see it’s over, don’t
you?’

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Yes, if that’s the way it’s been.’

‘It hasn’t been all like that, but for a long time
it’s been that way.’

‘I’m sorry I slapped you.’

‘Oh, that’s nothing. That hasn’t anything to do
with it. That was just a way to say good-bye.’

‘Don’t.’

‘I’ll have to get out,’ she said very tiredly. ‘I’ll
have to take the big suitcase, I’m afraid.’

‘Do it in the morning,’ he said. ‘You can do
everything in the morning.’

‘I’d rather do it now, Dick, and it would be easier.
But I’m so tired. It’s made me awfully tired and
given me a headache.’

‘You do whatever you want.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I wish it wouldn’t have
happened. But it’s happened. I’ll try to fix every¬
thing up for you. You’ll need somebody to look after
you. If I hadn’t of said some of that, or if you hadn’t
hit me; maybe we could have fixed it up again.’

‘No, it was over before that.’

‘I’m so sorry for you, Dick.’

‘Don’t you be sorry for me or I’ll slap you again.’

‘I guess I’d feel better if you slapped me,’ she
said. ‘I am sorry for you. Oh, I am.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘I’m sorry I said it about you not being good in
bed. I don’t know anything about that. I guess'
you’re wonderful.’

‘You’re not such a star,’ he said.

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

She began to cry again.

‘That’s worse than slapping/ she said.

‘Well, what did you say?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was so angry
and you hurt me so.’

‘Well, it’s all over, so why be bitter?’

‘Oh, I don’t want it to be over. But it is and

there’s nothing to do now.’

‘You’ll have your rummy professor.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Can’t we just shut up and not
talk any more?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll sleep out here.’

‘No. You can have the bed. You must. I’m
going out for a while.’

‘Oh, don’t go out.’

‘I’ve got to,’ he said.

‘Good-bye,’ she said, and he saw her face he
always loved so much, that crying never spoiled, and
her curly black hair, her small firm breasts under the
sweater forward against the edge of the table, and
he didn’t see the rest of her that he’d loved so much
and thought he had pleased, but evidently hadn’t
been any good to, that was all below the table, and
as he went out the door she was looking at him across
the table; and her. chin was on her hands; and she
.was crying. ,

189

CHAPTER XIV

He did not take the bicycle but walked down the
street. The moon was up now and the trees were
dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with
their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered
windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows
of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-
shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts,
under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter¬
breeding and the comforts of religion; the open¬
doored, lighted Cuban bolito houses, shacks whose
only romance was their names; The Red House,
Chicha’s; the pressed stone church; its steeples sharp
ugly triangles against the moonlight; the big grounds
and the long, black-domed bulk of the convent,
handsome in the moonlight; a filling station and a
sandwich place, bright-lighted beside a vacant lot
where a miniature golf course had been taken out;
past the brightly lit main street with the three drug
stores, the music store, the five Jew stores, three pool
rooms, two barbershops, five beer joints, three ice
cream parlours, the five poor and the one good
restaurant, two magazine and paper places, four
second-hand joints (one of which made keys), a
photographer’s, an office building with four dentists’
offices upstairs, the big dime store, a hotel on the
corner with taxis opposite; and across, behind the

190

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

hotel, to the street that led to jungle town, the big
unpainted frame house with lights and the girls in
the doorway, the mechanical piano going, and a
sailor sitting in the street; and then on back, past the
back of the brick courthouse with its clock luminous
at half-past ten, past the whitewashed jail buil din g
shining in the moonlight, to the embowered entrance
of the Lilac Time where motor cars filled the alley.

The Lilac Time was brightly lighted and full of
people, and as Richard Gordon went in he saw the
gambling room was crowded, the wheel turning and
the little ball clicking brittle against metal partitions
set in the bowl, the wheel turning slowly, the ball
whirring, then clicking jumpily until it settled and
there was only the turning of the wheel and the
rattling of chips. At the bar, the proprietor who was
serving with two bartenders, said "Alio. ’Alio. Mist’
Gordon. What you have?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘You don’t look good. Whatsa matter? You don’t
feel good?’

‘No.’

‘I fix you something just fine. Fix you up hokay.
You ever try a Spanish absinthe, ojen ?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Gordon.

‘You drink him you feel good. Want to fight any¬
body in a house,’ said the proprietor. ‘Make Mistah
Gordon a ojen special.’

Standing at the bar, Richard Gordon dr a nk three
ojen specials but he felt no better; the opaque.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

sweetish, cold, liquorice-tasting drink did not make
him feel any different.

‘Give me something else,’ he said to the bartender.

‘Whatsa matter? You no like a ojen special?’ the
proprietor asked. ‘You no feel good?’

‘No.’

‘You got be careful what you drink after him.’

‘Give me a straight whisky.’

The whisky warmed his tongue and the back of
his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and
suddenly, looking at himself in. the mirror behind
the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to
do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he
had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself
unconscious when he woke up it would be there.

A tall, very thin young man with a sparse stubble
of blond beard on his chin who was standing next to
him at the bar said, ‘Aren’t you Richard Gordon?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Herbert Spellman. We met at a party in
Brooklyn one time, I believe.’

‘Maybe,’ said Richard Gordon. ‘Why not?’

‘I liked your last book very much,’ said Spellman.
‘I liked them all.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Richard Gordon, ‘Have a drink?’

‘Have one with me,’ said Spellman. ‘Have you
tried this ojen?'

‘It’s not doing me anv srood.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘FeelinoTnw ’

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘Wouldn’t try another? 5

‘No. I’ll have whisky. 5

‘You know, it’s something to me to meet you, 5
Spellman said. ‘I don’t suppose you remember me
at that party. 5

£ No. But maybe it was a good party. You’re not
■ supposed to remember a good party, are you? 5

£ I guess not, 5 said Spellman. ‘It was at Margaret
Van Brunt’s. Do you remember? 5 he asked hope¬
fully.

‘I’m trying to.’

‘I was the one set fire to the place,’ Spellman
said.

‘No,’ said Gordon.

‘Yes,’ said Spellman, happily. ‘That was me.
That was the greatest party I was ever on.’

‘What are you doing now?’ Gordon asked.

‘Not much,’ said Spellman. ‘I get around a little.
I’m taking it sort of easy now. Are you writing a
new book?’

‘Yes. About half done.’

‘That’s great,’ said Spellman. ‘What’s it about?’

‘A strike in a textile plant.’

‘That’s marvellous,’ said Spellman. ‘You know
I’m a sucker for anything on the social conflict.’

‘What?’

T love it,’ said Spellman. ‘I go for it above any¬
thing else. You’re absolutely the best of the lot.
Listen, has it got a beautiful Jewish agitator in it?’

‘Why?’ asked Richard Gordon, suspiciously.

n 193

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘It’s a part for Sylvia Sidney. I’m in love with her
Want to see her picture?’

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Richard Gordon.

£ s have a drink, said Spellman, happily
‘Think of meeting you down here. You know I’m a
lucky fellow. Really lucky.’

‘Why?’ asked Richard Gordon.

Tm crazy,’ said Spellman. ‘Gee, it’s wonderful.
It’s just like being in love only it always comes out
right.’

Richard Gordon edged away a little.

‘Don’t be that way,’ said Spellman. ‘I’m not
violent. That is, I’m almost never violent. Come
on, let’s have a drink.’

‘Have you been crazy long?’

‘I think always,’ said Spellman. ‘I tell you it’s
the only way to be happy in times like these. What do
I care what Douglas Aircraft does? What do I care
what A. T. and T. stock does? They can’t touch me.
I just pick up one of your books or I take a drink,
or I look at Sylvia’s picture, and I’m happy. I’m
like a bird. I’m better than a bird. I’m a . . .’ He
seemed to hesitate and hunt for a word, then hurried
on. ‘I’m,a lovely little stork,’ he blurted out and
blushed. He looked at Richard Gordon fixedly, his
lips working, and a large blond young man de¬
tached himself from a group down the bar and
coming toward him put a hand on his arm.

‘Come on, Harold,’ he said. ‘We’d better be
getting home.’

194

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

Spellman looked at Richard Gordon wildly. ‘He

sneered at a stork , 5 he said. ‘He stepped away from
a stork. A stork that wheels in circling flight . . /
‘Come on, Harold , 5 said the big young man.
Spellman put out his hand to Richard Gordon.
‘No offence , 5 he said. ‘You 5 re a good writer. Keep
right on with it. Remember I’m always happy.
Don’t let them confuse you. See you soon . 5

With the large young man’s arm over his shoulder
the two of them moved out through the crowd
to the door. Spellman looked back and winked at
Richard Gordon.

‘Nice fella , 5 the proprietor said. He tapped his
head. ‘Very well educate. Studies too much I guess.
Likes to break glasses. He don’t mean no harm. Pay
for everything he break . 5
‘Does he come in here much ? 5
‘In the evening. What he say he was? A swan? 5
‘A stork. 5

‘Other night was a horse. With wings. Like a
horse on a white horse bottle only with pair a wings!
Nice fella all right. Plenty money. Getsa funny
ideas. Family keep him down here now with his
manager. He told me he like your books, Mr.
Gordon. What you have to drink? On the house . 5

‘A whisky , 5 said Richard Gordon. He saw the
sheriff coming toward him. The sheriff was a rather
cadaverous and extremely friendly man. Richard
Gordon had seen him that afternoon at the Bradleys 5
party and talked with him about the bank robbery.

*95

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Say,’ said the sheriff, ‘if you’re not doing any-
thing come along with me a little later. The coast
guard’s towing in Harry Morgan’s boat. A tanker
signalled it up off Matacumbe. They’ve got the
whole outfit.’

‘My God,’ said Richard Gordon. ‘Thev’ve sot
them all?’ g 1

‘They’re all dead except one man, the message said ’
‘You don’t know who it is?’

‘No, they didn’t say. God knows what happened.’

‘Have they got the money?’

‘Nobody knows. But it must be aboard if tliey
didn’t get to Cuba with it.’

‘When will they be in?’

‘Oh, it will be two or three hours yet.’

‘Where will they bring the boat?’

‘Into the navy yard, I suppose. Where the coast¬
guard ties up.’

‘Where’ll I see you to go down there?’

‘I’ll drop in here for you.’

‘Here or down at Freddy’s. I can’t stick it here
much longer.’

‘It’s pretty tough in at Freddy’s to-night. It’s full
of those Veterans from up on the Keys. They
always raise the devil.’

‘I’ll go down there and look at it,’ Richard Gor¬
don said. ‘I’m feeling kind of low.’

‘Well, keep out of trouble,’ the sheriff said. ‘I’ll
pick you up there in a couple of hours. Want a lift
down there?’

196

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘Thanks. 5

They went out through the crowd and Richard
Gordon got in beside the sheriff in his car.

‘What do you suppose happened in Morgan’s
boat? 5 he asked.

‘God knows, 5 the sheriff said. ‘It sounds pretty

grizly . 5

‘Didn’t they have any other information? 5

‘Not a thing, 5 said the sheriff. ‘Now look at that,
will you?'

They were opposite the brightly lighted open front
of Freddy’s place and it was jammed to the sidewalk.
Men in dungarees, some bareheaded, others in caps,
old service hats and in cardboard helmets, crowded
the bar three deep, and the loud-speaking nickle-in-
the-slot phonograph was playing ‘Isle of Capri 5 . As
they pulled up a man came hurtling out of the open
door, another man on top of him. They fell and
rolled on the sidewalk, and the man on top, holding
the other’s hair in both hands, banged his head up
and down on the cement, making a sickening noise.
No one at the bar was paying any attention.

The sheriff got out of the car and grabbed the man
on top by the shoulder.

‘Cut it out , 5 he said. ‘Get up there . 5

The man straightened up and looked at the sheriff.
‘For Christ sake, can’t you mind your own business ? 5

The other man, blood in his hair, blood oozing
from one ear, and more of it trickling down his
freckled face, squared off at the sheriff.

i97

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Leave my buddy alone,’ he said thickly. ‘What’s
the matter? Don’t you think I can take it?’

‘You can take it, Joey,’ the man who had been
hammering him said. ‘Listen,’ to the sheriff, ‘could
you let me take a buck?’

‘No,’ said the sheriff.

‘Go to hell then.’ He turned to Richard Gordon
‘What about it, pal?’

‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ said Gordon.

‘Come on,’ said the Vet, and took hold of Gordon’s

arm.

‘I’ll be by later,’ the sheriff said.

‘Good. I’ll be waiting for you.’

As they edged in toward the end of the bar, the
red-headed, freckle-faced man with the bloody ear
and face gripped Gordon by the arm.

‘My old buddy,’ he said.

‘He’s all right,’ the other Vet said. ‘He can take
it 5

t ^ can * a ke it, see? 3 the bloody-faced one said.
‘That’s where I got it on them. 5

c But you can’t hand it out, 5 someone said. ‘Cut
out the shoving. 5

‘Let us in, 5 the bloody-faced one said. ‘Let in me
and my old buddy. 5 He whispered into Richard
Gordon’s ear, ‘I don’t have to hand it out. I can'
take it, see? 5

Listen, the other Vet said as they finally reached
the beer-wet bar, ‘You ought to have seen him at
noon at the commissary at Camp Five. I had him
■ 198

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

down and I was hitting him on the head with a
bottle. Just like playing on a drum. I bet I hit him
fifty times. 5

‘More , 5 said the bloody-faced one.

‘It didn’t make no impression on him. 5

‘I can take it, 5 said the other. He whispered in
Richard Gordon’s ear, Tt’s a secret 5 .

Richard Gordon handed over two of the three
beers the white-j acketed, big bellied nigger bar¬
tender drew and pushed toward him.

‘What’s a secret ? 5 he asked.

‘Me , 5 said the bloody-faced one. ‘My secret . 5
‘He’s got a secret, 5 the other Vet said. ‘He isn’t
lying. 5

Want to hear it ? 5 the bloody-faced one said in
Richard Gordon’s ear.

Gordon nodded.

‘It don’t hurt . 5

The other nodded. ‘Tell him the worst of it.’

The red-headed one put his bloody lips almost to

Gordon’s ear.

‘Sometimes It feels good, 5 he said. ‘How do you

feel about that ? 5

At Gordon’s elbow was a tall, thin man with a
scar that ran from one corner of his eye,down over
his chin. He looked down at the red-headed one
and grinned.

‘First it was an art , 5 he said. ‘Then it became a
pleasure. If things made me sick you’d make me
sick, Red . 5

199

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘You make sick easy,’ the first Vet said. ‘What
outfit were you in?’

‘It wouldn’t mean anything to you, punch drunk ’
the tall man said. ’

‘Have a drink?’ Richard Gordon asked the tall
man.

‘Thanks,’ the other said. ‘I’m drinking.’

‘Don’t forget us,’ said one of the two men Gordon
had come in with.

‘Three more beers,’ said Richard Gordon, and the
negro drew them and pushed them over. There was
not elbow room to lift them in the crowd and Gordon
was pressed against the tall man.

‘You off a ship?’ asked the tall man.

‘No, staying here. You down from the Keys?’

*We came in to-night from Tortugas,’ the tall man
said. ‘We raised enough hell so they couldn’t keep
us there.’

‘He’s a red,’ the first Vet said.

‘So would you be if you had any brains,’ the tall
man said. ‘They sent a bunch of us there to get rid
of us but we raised too much hell for them.’ He
grinned at Richard Gordon.

‘Nail that guy,’ somebody yelled, and Richard
Gordon saw a fist hit a face that showed close to him.
The man who was hit was pulled away from the bar
by two others. In the clear, one man hit him again,
hard, in the face, and the other hit him in the body.
He went down on the cement floor and covered his
head with his arms and one of the men kicked him

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

in the small of the back. All this time he had not
made a sound. One of the men jerked him to his
feet and pushed him up against the wall.

4 Cool the son-of-a-bitch,’ he said, and as the man
sprawled, white faced against the wall, the second
man set himself, knees slightly bent, and then swung
up at him with a right fist that came from down near
the cement floor and : landed on the side of the white¬
faced man’s jaw. He fell forward on his knees and
then rolled slowly over, his head in a little pool of
blood. The two men left him there and came back
to the bar.

‘Boy, you can hit,’ said one.

‘That son-of-a-bitch comes into town and puts all
his pay in the postal savings and then hangs around
here picking up drinks off the bar , 5 the other said.
‘That’s the second time I cooled him.’

‘You cooled him this time . 5

‘When I hit him just then I felt his jaw go just
like a bag of marbles , 5 the other said happily. The
man lay against the wall and nobody paid any
attention to him.

‘Listen, if you landed on me like that it wouldn’t
make no impression,’ the red-headed Vet said.

‘Shut up, slappy,’ said the cooler. ‘You’ve got the
old rale.’

‘No, I. haven’t.’

‘You punchies make me sick,’ the cooler said.
‘Why should I bust my hands on you?’

‘That’s just what you’d do, bust your hands,’ the

201

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

red-headed one said. ‘Listen, pal,’ to Richard
Gordon, ‘How’s to have another?’

‘Aren’t they fine boys?’ said the tall man , ‘War
is a purifying and ennobling force. The question is
whether only people like ourselves here are fitted to
be soldiers or whether the different services have
formed us.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘I would like to bet you that not three men in this
room were drafted,’ the tall man said. ‘These are
the Hite. The very top cream of the scum. What
Wellington won at Waterloo with. Well, Mr.
Hoover ran us out of Anticosti flats and Mr. Roose¬
velt has shipped us down here to get rid of us.
They’ve run the camp in a way to invite an epidemic
but the poor bastards won’t die. They shipped a few
of us to Tortugas but that’s healthy now. Besides,
we wouldn’t stand for it. So they’ve brought us
back. What’s the next move? They’ve got to get
rid of us. You can see that, can’t you?’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are the desperate ones,’ the man said.
‘The ones with nothing to lose. We are the com¬
pletely brutalized ones. We’re worse than the stuff
the original Spartacus worked with. But it’s tough
to try to do anything with because we have been
beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the
only pride is in being able to take it. But we’re
not all like that. There are some of us that are

croincr-to hand it out/

202

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

c Are there many Communists in the camp?’

‘Only about forty/ the tall man said. ‘Out of
two thousand. It takes discipline and abnegation
to be a Communist; a rummy can’t be a
Communist . 3

‘Don’t listen to him/ the red-headed Vet said.
‘He’s just a goddamn radical.’

‘Listen/ the other Vet who was drinking beer
with Richard Gordon said, let me tell you about in
the navy. Let me tell you, you goddamn radical.’

‘Don’t listen to him/ the red-headed one said.
‘When the fleet’s in New York and you go ashore
there in the evening up under Riverside Drive
there’s old guys with long beards come down and
you can p— in their beards for a dollar. What do you
think about that?’

‘I’ll buy you a drink/ said the tall man, ‘and you
forget that one. I don’t like to hear that one.’

‘I don’t forget anything/ the red-headed one
said. ‘What’s the matter with you, pal?’

‘Is that true about the beards?’ Richard Gordon
asked. He felt a little sick.

‘I swear to God and my mother/ the red-headed
one said. ‘Hell, that ain’t nothing.’

Up the bar a Vet was arguing with Freddy
about the payment of a drink.

‘That’s what you had/ said Freddy.

Richard Gordon watched the Vet’s face. He was
very drunk, his eyes were bloodshot and he was
looking for trouble.

203

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘You’re a goddamn liar,’ he said to Freddy.

‘Eighty-five cents,’ Freddy said to him.

‘Watch this,’ said the red-headed Vet.

Freddy spread his hands on the bar. He was
watching the Vet.

‘You’re a goddamn liar,’ said the Vet, and picked
up a beer glass to throw it. As his hand closed on it,
Freddy’s right hand swung in a half circle over the
bar and cracked a big salt-cellar covered with a bar
towel alongside the Vet’s head.

‘Was it neat?’ said the red-headed Vet. ‘Was it
pretty?’

‘You ought to see him tap them with that sawed-
off billiard cue,’ the other said.

Two Vets standing next to where the salt-cellar
man had slipped down, looked at Freddy angrily.
‘What’s the idea of cooling him?’

‘Take it easy,’ said Freddy. ‘This one is on the
house. Hey, Wallace,’ he said. ‘Put that fellow
over against the wall.’

‘Was it pretty?’ the red-headed Vet asked Richard
Gordon. ‘Wasn’t that sweet?’

A heavy-set young fellow had dragged the salt-
cellared man out through the crowd. He pulled
him to his feet and the man looked at him vacantly.
Run along,’ he said to him. ‘Get yourself some
air.’

Over against the wall the man who had been
cooled sat with his head in his hands. The heavy-
set young man went over to hi™

204

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘You run along, too/ he said to him. ‘You just
get in trouble here.’

‘My jaw’s broken/ the cooled one said thickly.

Blood was running out of his mouth and down over

his chin.

. ‘You’re lucky you aren’t killed, that wallop he
hit you/ the thick-set young man said. ‘You run

along now/

‘My jaw’s broke/ the other said dully. ‘They
broke my jaw/

‘You better run along/ the young man said.
‘You just get in trouble here/

He helped the jaw-broken man to his feet and he
staggered unsteadily out to the street.

‘I’ve seen a dozen laying against the wall over
there on a big night/ the red-headed Vet said.
‘One morning I seen that big boogie there mopping
it up with a bucket. Didn’t I see you mop it up
with a bucket ? 5 he asked the big negro bar¬
tender.

‘Yes, sir/ said the bartender. ‘Plenty of times.
Yes, sir. But you never seen me fight nobody/
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said the red-headed Vet.
‘With a bucket/

‘This looks like a big night coming on/ the other
Vet said. ‘What do you say, pal?’ to Richard
Gordon. ‘O.K. we have another one?’

Richard Gordon could feel himself getting drunk.
His face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar, was
beginning to look strange to him.

205

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘What’s your name?’ he asked the tall Communist

‘Jacks,’ the tall man said. ‘Nelson Jacks.’

‘Where were you before you came here?’

‘Oh, around,’ the man said. ‘Mexico, Cuba
South America, and around.’ ’

‘I envy you,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘Why envy me? Why don’t you get to work?’

‘I’ve written three books,’ Richard Gordon said
‘I’m writing one now about Gastonia.’

‘Good,’ said the tall man. ‘That’s fine. What did
you say your name was ? 5

‘Richard Gordon . 5

‘Oh/ said the tall man.

‘What do you mean, “Oh 55 ? 5

‘Nothing/ said the tall man.

‘Did you ever read the books?’ Richard Gordon
asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t you like them?’

‘No,’ said the tall man.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like to say.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I thought they were s—,’ the tall man said and
turned away.

‘I guess this is my night,’ said Richard Gordon.
‘This is my big night. What did you say you’d
have?’ he asked the red-headed Vet. ‘I’ve got two
dollars left.’

One beer,’ said the red-headed man. ‘Listen,
206

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

you’re my pal. I think your books are fine. To hell
with that radical bastard.’

‘You haven’t got a book with you?’ asked the
other Vet. ‘Pal, I’d like to read one. Did you ever
write for Western Stories , or War Aces? I could read
that War Aces every day.’

‘Who is that tall bird?’ asked Richard Gordon.

‘I tell you he’s just a radical bastard,’ said the
second Vet. ‘The camp’s full of them. We’d run
them out, but I tell you half the time most of the
guys in camp can’t remember.’

‘Can’t remember what?’ asked the red-headed
one.

‘Can’t remember anything,’ said the other.

‘You see me?’ asked the red-headed one.

‘Yes,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘Would you guess I got the finest little wife in the
world?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I have,’ said the red-headed one. ‘And
that girl is nuts about me. She’s like a slave. .“Give
me another cup of coffee,” I say to her. “O.K.,
Pop,” she says. And I get it. Anything else the
same way. She’s carried away with me. If I got a
whim, it’s her law.’

‘Only where is she?’ asked the other Vet.

‘That’s it,’ said the red-headed one. ‘That’s it,
pal. Where is she?’

‘He don’t know where she is,’ the second Vet

207

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Not only that,’ said the red-headed one. ‘I
don’t know where I saw her last.’

‘He don’t even know what country she’s in.’

‘But listen, buddy,’ said the red-headed one
‘Wherever she is, that little girl is faithful.’

‘That’s God’s truth,’ said the other Vet. ‘You
can stake your life on that.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the red-headed one, ‘I think
that she is maybe Ginger Rogers and that she has
gone into the moving pictures.’

‘Why not?’ said the other.

‘Then again, I just see her waiting there quietly
where I live.’ " "

‘Keeping the home fires burning,’ said the other.

‘That’s it,’ said the red-headed one. ‘She’s the
finest little woman in the world.’

‘Listen,’ said the other,‘my old mother is O.K. too ’

‘That’s right.’ ' ’

‘She’s dead,’ said the second Vet. ‘Let’s not talk
about her.’

‘Aren’t you married, pal?’ the red-headed Vet
asked Richard Gordon.

‘Sure,’ he said. Down the bar, about four
away, he could see the red face, the blue eyes and
sandy, beer-dewed moustache of Professor Mac-
Walsey. Professor MacWalsey was looking straight
ahead of him and as Richard Gordon watched he
finished his glass of beer and, raising his lower lip,
removed the foam from his moustache. Richard
Gordon noticed how bright blue his eyes were.

20 8

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

As Richard Gordon watched himhe felt asickfeeling
In his chest. And he knew for the first time how a man
feels when he looks at the man his wife is leaving him for.

‘What’s the matter, pal ? 5 asked the red-headed Vet.

‘Nothing . 5

‘You don’t feel good, I can tell you feel bad . 5

‘No , 5 said Richard Gordon.

‘You look like you seen a ghost . 5

‘You see that fellow down there with a
moustache ? 5 asked Richard Gordon.

‘Him ? 5

‘Yes . 5

‘What about him ? 5 asked the second Vet.

‘Nothing , 5 said Richard Gordon. ‘Goddamn it.
Nothing . 5

‘Is he a bother to you? We can cool him. The three of
us can jump him and you can put the boots to him . 5

‘No , 5 said Richard Gordon. ‘It wouldn’t do any
good . 5

‘We’ll get him when he goes outside , 5 the red¬
headed Vet said. ‘I don’t like the look of him. The
son-of-a-bitch looks like a scab to me . 5

‘I hate him , 5 said Gordon. ‘He’s mined my life . 5

‘We’ll give him the works , 5 said the second Vet.
‘The yellow rat. Listen, Red, get a hold of a couple
of bottles. We’ll beat him to death. Listen, when
did he do it, pal? O.K., we have another one ? 5

‘We’ve got a dollar and seventy cents , 5 Richard
Gordon said.

‘Maybe we better get a pint then , 5 the red-

o 209

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

headed Vet said. ‘My teeth are floating now.’

‘No,’ said the other. ‘This beer isgood for you. Thisis
draught beer. Stick with the beer. Let’s go and beat
this guy up and come back and drink some more beer.’

‘No. Leave him alone.’

‘No, pal. Not us. You said that rat ruined your wife.’

‘My life. Not my wife.’

‘Jese! Pardon me. I’m sorry, pal.’

‘He defaulted and ruined the bank,’ the other Vet
said. ‘I’ll bet there’s a reward for him. By God, I seen
a picture of him at the post office to-day.’

‘What were you doing at the post office?’ asked
the other suspiciously.

‘Can’t I get a letter?’

‘What’s the matter with getting letters at camp?’

‘Do you think I went to the postal savings?’

‘What were you doing in the post office?’

‘I just stopped by.’

‘Take that,’ said his pal and swung on him as
well as he could in the crowd.

‘There goes those two cell mates,’ said somebody.
Holding and punching, kneeing and butting, the
two were pushed out of the door.

‘Let ’em fight on the sidewalk,’ the wide¬
shouldered young man said. ‘Those bastards fight
three or four times a night.’

‘They’re a couple of punchies,’ another Vet said.
‘Red could fight once but he’s got the old rale.’
‘They’ve both got it.’

‘Red got it fighting a fellow in the ring,’ a short

' 210 ' '

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

chunky Vet said. This fellow had the old rale and
he was all broke out on the shoulders and back.
Every time they’d go into a clinch he’d rub his
shoulder under Red’s nose or across his puss.’

s Oh 5 nuts. What did he put his face there for?’

That was the way Red carried his head when he
was in close. Down, like this. And this fellow was
just roughing him.’

Oh, nuts. That story is all bull. Nobody ever
got the old rale from anybody in a fight.’

That’s what you think. Listen, Red was as clean
a living kid as you ever saw. I knew him. He was in
my outfit. He was a good little fighter, too. I mean
good. He was married, too, to a nice girl. I mean
nice. And this Benny Sampson gave him that old
rale just as sure as I’m standing here.’

- Then sit down,’ said another Vet. ‘How did
Poochy get it?’

‘He got it in Shanghai.’

‘Where did you get yours?’

‘I ain’t got it.’

‘Where did Suds get it?’

‘Off a girl in Brest, coming home.’

‘That’s all you guys ever talk about. The old
rale. What difference does the old rale make?’

‘None, the way we are now,’ one Vet said.
‘You’re just as happy with it.’

‘Poochy’s happier. He don’t know where he is.’

‘What’s the old rale?’ Professor MacWalsey asked
the man next to him at the bar. The man told him.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

C I wonder what the derivation is,’ Professor Mar
Walsey said.

‘I don’t know,.’ said the man. ‘I’ve always heard
it called the old rale since my first enlistment. Some
call it rale. But usually they call it the old rale.’

‘I’d like to know,’ said Professor MacWalsey.
‘Most of those terms are old English words.’

‘Why do they call it the old rale?’ the Vet next
to Professor MacWalsey asked another.

‘I don’t know.’

Nobody seemed to know but all enjoyed the
atmosphere of serious philological discussion.

Richard Gordon was next to Professor Mac¬
Walsey at the bar now. When Red and Poochy had
started fighting he had been pushed down there
and he had not resisted the move.

‘Hello,’ Professor MacWalsey said to him. ‘Do
you want a drink?’

‘Not with you,’ said Richard Gordon.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Professor Mac¬
Walsey. ‘Did you ever see anything like this?’

‘No,’ said Richard Gordon.
t very strange,’ said Professor MacWalsey.
‘They’re amazing. I always come here nights.’

‘Don’t you ever get in trouble?’

‘No. Why should I?’

‘Drunken fights.’

‘I never seem to have any trouble.’

A couple of friends of mine wanted to beat you
up a couple of minutes ago.’

212

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

‘Yes . 5

‘I wish I would have let them . 5

‘I don’t think it would make much difference/
said Professor MacWalsey in the odd way of
speaking he had. ‘If I annoy you by being here I

can go. 5

‘No/ said Richard Gordon. ‘I sort of like to be
near you . 5

‘Yes/ said Professor MacWalsey.

‘Have you ever been married ? 5 asked Richard
Gordon.

‘Yes . 5

‘What happened ? 5

‘My wife died during the influenza epidemic in igi8. 5

‘Why do you want to marry again now? 5

‘I think I’d be better at it now. I think perhaps
I’d be a better husband now . 5

‘So you picked my wife. 5

‘Yes/ said Professor MacWalsey.

‘Damn you/ said Richard Gordon, and hit him
in the face.

Someone grabbed his arm. He jerked it loose and
someone hit him crashingly behind the ear. He
could see Professor MacWalsey, before him, still at
the bar, his face red, blinking his eyes. He was
reaching for another beer to replace the one Gordon
had spilled, and Richard Gordon drew back his
arm to hit him again. As he did so, something
exploded again behind his ear and all the lights
flared up, wheeled round, and then went out.

213

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Then he was standing in the doorway of Freddy’s
place. His head was ringing, and the crowded room
was unsteady and wheeling slightly, and he felt sick
at his stomach. He could see the crowd looking at
him. The big-shouldered young man was standing
by him. ‘Listen,’ he was saying, ‘you don’t want to
start any trouble in here. There’s enough fights in
here with those rummies.’

‘Who hit me?’ asked Richard Gordon.

‘I hit you,’ said the wide young man. ‘That
fellow’s a regular customer here. You want to take
it easy. You don’t want to go to fight in here.’

Standing unsteadily Richard Gordon saw Profes¬
sor MacWalsey coming toward him away from the
crowd at the bar. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t
want anybody to slug you. I don’t blame you for
feeling the way you do.’

‘Goddamn you,’ said Richard Gordon, and
started toward him. It was the last thing he remem¬
bered doing for the wide young man set himself,
dropped his shoulders slightly, and clipped him
again, and he went down, this time, on the cement
floor on his face. The wide young man turned to
Professor MacWalsey. ‘That’s all right, Doc,’ he
said, hospitably. ‘He won’t annoy you now.
What’s the matter with him anyway?’

‘I’ve got to take him home,’ said Professor Mac¬
Walsey. ‘Will he be all right?’

‘Sure.’

Help me to get him in a taxi,’ said Professor
214

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER.

MacWalsey. They carried Richard Gordon out
between them and with the driver helping, put him
in the old model T taxi.

4 You’re sure he’ll be all right ? 5 asked Professor

MacWalsey.

c Just pull on his ears good when you want to
bring him to. Put some water on him. Look out he
don’t want to fight when he comes to. Don’t let
him grab you, Doc.’

fi No,’ said Professor MacWalsey.

Richard Gordon’s head lay back at an odd angle
in the back of the taxi and he made a heady,
rasping noise when he breathed. Professor Mac¬
Walsey put his arm under his head and held it so it
did not bump against the seat.

Where are we going?’ asked the taxi driver.

‘Out on the other end of town,’ said Professor
MacWalsey. 'Past the Park. Down the street from
the place where they sell mullets.’

'That’s the Rocky Road,’ the driver said.

'Yes,’ said Professor MacWalsey.

As they passed the first coffee shop up the street,
Professor MacWalsey told the driver to stop. He
wanted to go in and get some cigarettes. He laid
Richard Gordon’s head down carefully on the seat
and went into the coffee shop. When he came out to
get back into the taxi, Richard Gordon was gone.

'Where did he go?’ he asked the driver.

'That’s him up the street,’ the driver said.

'Catch up with him.’

215

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

As the taxi pulled up even with him, Professor
MacWalsey got out and went up to Richard Gordon
who was lurching along the sidewalk.

‘Come on, Gordon,’ he said. ‘We’re going home.’

Richard Gordon looked at him.

‘We?’ he said, swaying.

‘I want you to go home in this taxi.’

‘You go to hell.’

‘I wish you’d come,’ Professor MacWalsey said.
‘I want you to get home safely.’

‘Where’s your gang?’ said Richard Gordon.

‘What gang?’

‘Your gang that beat me up.’

‘That was the bouncer. I didn’t know he was
going to hit you.’

‘You lie,’ said Richard Gordon. He swung at the
red-faced man in front of him and missed him.
He slipped forward on to his knees and got up
slowly. His knees were scraped raw from the side¬
walk, but he did not know it.

‘Come on and fight,’he said brokenly.

‘I don’t fight,’ said Professor MacWalsey. ‘If
you’ll get into the taxi I’ll leave you.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Richard Gordon and started
down the street.

‘Leave him go,’ said the taxi driver. ‘He’s all
right now.’

‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’

‘Hell,’the taxi driver said. ‘He’s perfect.’

‘I’m worried about him,’ Professor MacWalsey said.

216

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

‘You can’t get him in without fighting him,’ the
taxi-driver said. ‘Let him go. He’s fine. Is he
your brother?’

‘In a way,’ said Professor MacWalsey.

He watched Richard Gordon lurching down the
street until he was out of sight in the shadow from
the big trees whose branches dipped down to grow
into the ground like roots. What he was thinking as
he watched him, was not pleasant. It is a mortal
sin, he thought, a grave and deadly sin and a great
cruelty, and while technically one’s religion may
permit the ultimate result, I cannot pardon myself.
On the other hand, a surgeon cannot desist while
operating for fear of hurting the patient. But why
must all the operations in life be performed without
an anaesthetic? If I had been a better man I
would have let him beat me up. It would have
been better for him. The poor stupid man. The
poor homeless man. I ought to stay with him, but I
know that is too much for him to bear. I am
ashamed and disgusted with myself and I hate
what I have done. It all may turn out badly too.
But I must not think about that. I will now return
to the anaesthetic I have used for seventeen years
and will not need much longer. Although it is
probably a vice now for which I only invent excuses.
Though at least it is a vice for which I am suited.
But I wish I could help that poor man whom I am
wronging.

‘Drive me back to Freddy’s,’ he said.

217

CHAPTER XV

The coast-guard cutter towing the Queen Conch was
coming down the hawk channel between the reef
and the keys. The cutter rolled in the cross chop
the light north wind raised against the flood tide
but the white boat was towing easily and well.

‘She’ll be all right if it doesn’t breeze,’ the coast¬
guard captain said. ‘She tows pretty, too. That
Robby built nice boats. Could you make out any
of the guff he was talking?’

‘He didn’t make any sense,’ the mate said. ‘He’s
way out of his head.’

‘I guess he’ll die all right,’ the captain said. ‘Shot
in the belly that way. Do you suppose he killed
those four Cubans?’

‘You can’t tell. I asked him but he didn’t know
what I was saying.’

‘Should we go talk to him again?’

‘Let’s have a look at him,’ the captain said.

Leaving the quartermaster at the wheel, running
the beacons down the channel, they went behind
the wheel house into the captain’s cabin. Harry
Morgan lay there on the iron pipe bunk. His eyes
were closed but he opened them when the captain
touched his wide shoulder.

‘How you feeling, Harry?’ the captain asked him.
Harry looked at him and did not speak.

2l8

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘Can we get you anything, boy?’ the captain
asked him.

Harry Morgan looked at him.

‘He don’t hear you,’ said the mate.

‘Harry,’ said the captain, ‘do you want anything,
boy?’

He wet a towel in the water bottle on a gimbal by
the bunk and moistened Harry Morgan’s deeply
cracked lips. They were dry and black looking.
Looking at him, Harry Morgan started speaking.
‘A man,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ said the captain. ‘Go on.’

‘A man,’ said Harry Morgan, very slowly, ‘ain’t
got no hasn’t got any can’t really isn’t any way
out.’ He stopped. There had been no expression
on his face at all when he spoke.

‘Go on, Harry,’ said the captain. ‘Tell us who
did it. How did it happen, boy?’

‘A man,’ said Harry, looking at him now with
his narrow eyes on the wide, high-cheek-boned
face, trying now to tell him.

‘Four men,’ said the captain helpfully. He
moistened the lips again, squeezing the towel so a
few drops went between them.

‘A man,’ corrected Harry; then stopped.

‘All right. A man,’ the captain said.

‘A man,’ Harry said again very flatly, very
slowly, talking with his dry mouth. ‘Now the way
things are the way they go no matter what no.’

The captain looked at the mate and shook his head.

219

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Who did it, Harry?’ the mate asked.

Harry looked at him.

‘Don’t fool yourself,’ he said. The captain and
the mate both bent over him. Now it was coming.
‘Like trying to pass cars on the top of hills. On that
road in Cuba. On any road. Anywhere. Just like
that. I mean how things are. The way that they
been going. For a while yes sure all right. Maybe
with luck. A man.’ He stopped. The captain shook
his head at the mate again. Harry Morgan looked
at him flatly. The captain wet Harry’s lips again.
They made a bloody mark on the towel.

‘A man,’ Harry Morgan said, looking at them
both. ‘One man alone ain’t got. No man alone
now.’ He stopped. ‘No matter how a man alone
ain’t got no bloody chance.’

He shut his eyes. It had taken him a long time to
get it out and it had taken him all of his life to learn
it.

He lay there his eyes open again.

‘Come on,’ said the captain to the mate. ‘You
sure you don’t want anything, Harry?’

Harry Morgan looked at him but he did not
answer. He had told them; but they had not heard.

‘We’ll be back,’ said the captain. ‘Take it easy,
boy.’

Harry Morgan watched them go out of the cabin.

Forward in the wheelhouse, watching it get dark
and the light of Sombrero starting to sweep out at

220

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

sea, the mate said, ‘He gives you the w illi es out of
his head like that.’

‘Poor fellow,’ said the captain. ‘Well, we’ll be in
pretty soon now. We’ll get him in soon after mid¬
night. If we don’t have to slow down for that tow.’
‘Think he’ll live?’

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘But you can’t ever tell.’

321

CHAPTER XVI

There were many people in the dark street outside
the iron gates that closed the entrance to the old
submarine base now transformed into a yacht basin.
The Cuban watchman had orders to let no one in
and the crowd were pressing against the fence to
look through between the iron rods into the dark
enclosure lit, along the water, by the lights of the
yachts that lay moored at the finger piers. The
crowd was as quiet as only a Key West crowd
can be. The yachtsmen pushed and elbowed their
way through to the gate and by the watchman.

‘Hey. You canna comein,’ the watchman said.

‘What the hell. We’re off a yacht. 5

‘Nobody supposacomein, 5 the watchman said.
‘Get back. 5

‘Don’t be stupid, 5 said one of the yachtsmen, and
pushed him aside to go up the road toward the dock.

Behind them was the crowd outside the gates,
where the little watchman stood uncomfortable and
amdous in his cap, his long moustache and his
dishevelled authority, wishing he had a key to lock
the big gate, and, as they strode heartily up the
sloping road they saw ahead, then passed, a group of
men waiting at the coast-guard pier. They paid no
attention to them but walked along the dock, past
the piers where the other yachts lay to pier number
five, and out on the pier to where the gang plank
reached, in the glare of a flood light, from rough

222

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

wooden pier to the teak deck of the Mew Emma II.
In the main cabin they sat in big leather chairs
beside a long table on which magazines were spread,
and one of them rang for the steward.

"Scotch and soda , 5 he said. "You, Henry ? 5
"Yes , 5 said Henry Carpenter.

"What was the matter with that silly ass at the gate? 5
Tve no idea , 5 said Henry Carpenter.

The steward, in his white jacket, brought the two
glasses.

‘Play those disks I put out after dinner, 5 the

yachtsman, whose name was Wallace Johnston, said.
"I’m afraid I put them away, sir, 5 the steward said.
"Damn you , 5 said Wallace Johnston. "Play that
new Bach album then . 5

"Very good, sir, 5 said the steward. He went over
to the record cabinet and took out an album and
moved with it to the gramophone. He began play¬
ing the "Sarabande 5 .

"Did you see Tommy Bradley to-day? 5 asked
Henry Carpenter. "I saw him as the plane came in. 5

T can’t bear him , 5 said Wallace. "Neither him
nor that whore of a wife of his. 5

"I like Helene , 5 said Henry Carpenter. "She has
such a good time. 5
"Did you'ever try it ? 5
"Of course. It’s marvellous . 5
"I can ? t stick her at any price, 5 said Wallace John¬
ston. "Why in God’s name does she live down here? 5
"They have a lovely place. 5

223

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘It is a nice clean little yacht basin,’ said Wallace
Johnston. ‘Is it true Tommy Bradley’s impotent?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. You hear that about every
one. He’s simply broad-minded.’

‘Broad-minded is excellent. She’s certainly a
broad if there ever was one.’

‘She’s a remarkably nice woman,’ said Henry
Carpenter. ‘You’d like her, Wally.’

‘I would not,’ said Wallace. ‘She represents
everything I hate in a woman, and Tommy
Bradley epitomizes everything I hate in a man.’

‘You feel awfully strongly to-night.’

‘You never feel strongly because you have no
consistency,’ Wallacejohnstonsaid. ‘You can’t make
up your mind. You don’t know what you are even.’

‘Let’s drop me,’ said Henry Carpenter. He lit a
cigarette.

‘Why should I?’

‘Well, one reason you might is because I go with
you on your bloody yacht, and at least half the time
I do what you want to do, and that keeps you from
paying blackmail and one thing and another, to the
people that do know what they are, and what you
are.’

‘You’re in a pretty mood,’ said Wallace Johnston.
‘You know I never pay blackmail.’

‘No. You’re too tight to. You have friends like
me instead.’

‘I haven’t any other friends like you.’

‘Don’t be charming,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t feel up to
224

HARRY MORGAN — WINTER

it to-night. J ust go ahead and play Bach and abuse your
steward and drink a little too much and go to bed . 5

‘What’s gotten into you ? 5 said the other, standing
up. 4 Why are you getting so damned unpleasant?
You 5 re not such a great bargain, you know . 5

C I know , 5 said Henry. Til be oh so jolly to¬
morrow. But to-night's a bad night. Didn’t you
ever notice any difference in nights? I suppose
when you’re rich enough there isn’t any difference.’

£ You talk like a schoolgirl.’

c Good night , 5 said Henry Carpenter. Tm not a
schoolgirl nor a schoolboy. I’m going to bed.
Everything will be awfully jolly in the morning . 5

4 What did you lose? Is that what makes you so
gloomy?’

‘I lost three hundred.’

‘See? I told you that was it . 5

‘You always know, don’t you ? 5

‘But look. You lost three hundred.’

‘I’ve lost more than that . 5

‘How much more?’

‘The jackpot,’ said Henry Carpenter. ‘The
eternal jackpot. I’m playing a machine now that
doesn’t give jackpots any more. Only to-night I just
happened to think about it. Usually I don’t think
about it. Now I’m going to bed so I won’t bore you . 5

‘You don’t bore me. But just try not to be rude . 5

‘I’m afraid I’m rude and you bore me. Good
night. Everything will be fine to-morrow.’

‘You’re damned rude . 5

p

225

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Take it or leave it,’ said Henry. ‘IVe been
doing both all my life.’

‘Good night,’ said Wallace Johnston hopefully.

Henry Carpenter did not answer. He was
listening to the Bach.

‘Don’t go off to bed like that,’ Wallace Johnston
said. ‘Why be so temperamental?’

‘Drop it.’

‘Why should I? I’ve seen you come out of it before.’

‘Drop it.’

‘Have a drink and cheer up.’

‘I don’t want a drink and it wouldn’t cheer me up.’

‘Well, go off to bed, then.’

‘I am,’ said Henry Carpenter.

That was how it was that night on the New
Emma //, with a crew of twelve, Cap tail Nils
Larson, master, and on board Wallace Johnston,
owner, 38 years old, M.A. Harvard, composer’
money from silk mills, unmarried, interdit de sSjorn
in Paris, well known from Algiers to Biskra, and
one guest, Henry Carpenter, 36, M.A. Harvard,
money now two hundred a month in trust fund
from his mother, formerly four hundred and fifty a
month until the bank administering the Trust Fund
had exchanged one good security for another good
security, for other not so good securities, and, fi nall y
for an equity in an office building the bank had been
saddled with and which paid nothing at all. Long
before this reduction in income it had been said of
Henry Carpenter that if he were dropped from a

226

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

height of 5500 feet without a parachute, he would
land safely with his knees under some rich man’s
table. But he gave value in good company for his
entertainment and while it was only lately, and
rarely, that he felt, or expressed himself, as he had
to-night, his friends had felt for some time that he
was cracking up. If he had not been felt to be
cracking up, with that instinct for feeling something
wrong with a member of the pack and healthy
desire to turn him out, if it is impossible to destroy
him, which characterizes the rich; he would not
have been reduced to accepting the hospitality of
Wallace Johnston. As it was, Wallace Johnston,
with his rather special pleasures, was Henry
Carpenter’s last stand, and he was defending his
position better than he knew for his honest courting
of an end to their relationship; his subsequent
brutality of expression, and sincere insecurity of
tenure intrigued, and seduced the other who might,
given Henry Carpenter’s age, have easily been bored
by a steady compliance. Thus Henry Carpenter"
postponed his inevitable suicide by a matter of
weeks if not of months.

The money on which it was not worth while for
him to live was one hundred and seventy dollars
more a month than the fisherman Albert Tracy had
been supporting his family on at the time of his death
three days before.

Aboard the other yachts lying at the finger piers
there were other people with other problems. On

227

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

one of the largest yachts, a handsome, black, bar-
quentine rigged three-master, a sixty-year-old grain
broker lay awake worrying about the report he
had received from his office of the activities of the
investigators from the Internal Revenue Bureau.
Ordinarily, at this time of night, he would have
quieted his worry with Scotch highballs and have
reached the state where he felt as tough and regard¬
less of consequences as any of the old brothers of the
coast with whom in character and standards of
conduct, he had, truly, much in common. But his
doctor had forbidden him all liquor for a month,
for three months really, that is they had said it
would kill him in a year if he did not give up alcohol
for at least three months, so he was going to lay off
it for a month; and now he worried about the call
he had received from the Bureau before he left town
asking him exactly where he was going and whether
he planned to leave the United States coastal waters.

He lay, now, in his pyjamas, on his wide bed, two
pillows under his head, the reading light on, but he
could not keep his mind on the book, which was an
account of a trip to Galapagos. In the old days he
had never brought them to this bed. He’d had
them in their cabins and he came to this bed after¬
wards. This was his own stateroom, as private to
him as his office. He never wanted a woman in his
room. When he wanted one he went to hers, and
when he was through he was through, and now that
he was through for good his brain had the same

228

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

clear coldness always that had, in the old days, been

an after effect. And he lay now, with no kindly
blurring, denied all that chemical courage that had
soothed his mind and warmed his heart for so many
years, and wondered what the department had,
what they had found and what they would twist,
what they would accept as normal and what they
would insist was evasion; and he was not afraid of
them, but only hated them and the power they would
use so insolently that all his own, hard, small, tough
and lasting insolence, the one permanent thing he
had gained and that was truly valid, would be drilled
through, and, if he were ever made afraid, shattered.

He did not think in any abstractions, but in deals,
in sales, in transfers and in gifts. He thought in
shares, in bales, in thousands of bushels, in options,
holding companies, trusts, and subsidiary corpora¬
tions, and as he went over it he knew they had plenty,
enough so he would have no peace for years. If they
would not compromise it would be very bad. In the
old days he would not have worried, but the fighting
part of him was tired now, along with the other part,
and he was alone in all of this now and he lay on the
big, wide, old bed and could neither read nor sleep.

His wife had divorced him ten years before after
twenty years of keeping up appearances, and he had
never missed her nor had he ever loved her. He had
Started with her money and she had borne him two
male children, both of whom, like their mother,
were fools. He had treated her well until the money

229

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

he had made was double her original capital and
then he could afford to take no notice of her. After
his money had reached that point he had never
been annoyed by her sick headaches, by her com
plamts, or by her plans. He had ignored them.

He had been admirably endowed for a speculative
career because he had possessed extraordinary sexual
vitality which gave him the confidence to gamble
well; common sense, an excellent mathematical
brain, a permanent but controlled scepticism- a
scepticism which was as sensitive to impending
disaster as an accurate aneroid barometer to
atmospheric pressure; and a value time sense that
kept him from trying to hit tops or bottoms. These
coup ed with a lack of morals, an ability to make
people like him without ever liking or trusting them
m return, while at the same time convincing
dxem warmly and heartily of his friendship; not a
disinterested friendship, but a friendship so in¬
terested m their success that it automatically made
them accomplices; and an incapacity for either
remorse or pity, had carried him to where he was
now. And where he was now was lying in a pair of
striped silk pyjamas that covered his shrunken old
man s chest, his bloated little belly, his now useless and
disproportionately large equipment that had once

W hls P nde > and hls small flabby legs, lying on a
bed unable to sleep because he finally had remorse.

a nit** 8 remorse w 88 to *ink if only he had not been
quite so smart five years ago. He could have paid

230

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

the taxes then without any juggling, and if he harl
only done so he would be all right now. So he lay
thinking of that and finally he slept; but because
remorse had once found the crack and begun to
seep in, he did not know he slept because his brain
kept on as it had while he was awake. So there
would be no rest and, at his age, it would not take
so long for that to get him.

He used to say that only suckers worried and he
would keep from worrying now until he could notsleep.
He might keep from it until he slept, but then it would
come in, and since he was this old its task, was easy.

He would not need to worry about what he had
done to other people, nor what had happened to
them due to him, nor how they’d ended; who’d
moved from houses on the Lake Shore drive to
taking boarders out in Austin, whose debutante
daughters now were dentists’ assistants when they
had a job; who ended up a night watchman at
sixty-three after that last corner; who shot himself
early one morning before breakfast and which one
of his children found him, and what the mess
looked like; who now rode on the L to work,
when there was work, from Berwyn, trying to sell,
first, bonds; then motor cars; then house-to-housing
novelties and specialties (we don’t want no
pedlars, get out of here, the door slammed in his
face), until he varied the leaning drop his father
• made from forty-two floors up, with no rush of
plumes as when an eagle falls, to a step forward

231

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

on to the third rail in front of the Aurora-Elgin
train, his overcoat pocket full of unsaleable combina¬
tion eggbeaters and fruit juice extractors. Just let
me demonstrate it, madame. You attach it here, screw
down on this little gadget here. Mow watch. No, I don’t
want it. Just try one. I don’t want it. Get out.

So he got out on to the sidewalk with the frame¬
houses, the naked yards and the bare catalpa trees
where no one wanted it or anything else, that led
down to the Aurora-Elgin tracks.

Some made the long drop from the apartment or
the office window; some took it quietly in two-car
garages with the motor running; some used the
native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson;
those well-constructed implements that end insom¬
nia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bank¬
ruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions
by the pressure of a finger; those admirable
American instruments so easily carried, so sure of
effect, so well designed to end the American dream
when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback
the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.

The men he broke made all these various exits
but that never worried him. Somebody had to lose
and only suckers worried.

, No he would not have to think of them nor of the -■
by-products of successful speculation. You win;
somebody's got to lose, and only suckers worry. . -■ * .

It would be enough for him to think about how
much it would be better if he had not been quite so

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

smart five years ago, and in a little while, at his age,
the wish to change what can no longer be undone,
will open up the gap that will let worry in. Only
suckers worry. But he can knock the worry if he
takes a Scotch and soda. The hell with what the
doctor said. So he rings for one and the steward
comes sleepily, and as he drinks it, the speculator is
not a sucker now; except for death.

While on the next yacht beyond, a pleasant, dull
and upright family are asleep. The father’s con¬
science is good and he sleeps soundly on his side, a
clipper ship running before a blow framed above his
head, the reading light on, a book dropped beside
the bed. The mother sleeps well and dreams about
her garden. She is fifty but is a handsome, whole¬
some, well-kept woman who looks attractive as she
sleeps. The daughter dreams about her fiance who
comes to-morrow on the plane and she stirs in her
sleep and laughs at something in the dream and
without waking, raises her knees almost- against her
chin, curled up like a cat, with curly blonde hair
and her smooth-skinned pretty face, asleep she
looks as her mother did when she was a girl.

They are a happy family and all love each other.
The father is a man of civic pride and many good
works, who opposed prohibition, is not bigoted and
is generous, sympathetic, understanding and almost
never irritable. The cfew of the yacht are well-paid,
well-fed and have good quarters. They all think
highly of the owner and like his wife and daughter.

233

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

The fiance is a Skull and Bones fraternity man, voted
most likely to succeed, voted most popular, who still
thinks more of others than of himself and’would be
too good for anyone except a lovely girl like Frances.
He is probably a little too good for Frances too, but
it will be years before Frances realizes this, perhaps-
and she may never realize it, with luck. The type
of man who is tapped for Bones is rarely also tapped
for bed; but with a lovely girl like Frances intention
counts as much as performance.

So, anyhow, they all sleep well and where did the
money come from that they’re all so happy with
and use so well and gracefully? The money came
from selling something everybody uses by the
millions of bottles, which costs three cents a quart
to make, for a dollar a bottle in the large (pint)
size, fifty cents in the medium, and a quarter in the
small. But it’s more economical to buy the large, and
if you make ten dollars a week the costisjust the same
to you as though you were a millionaire, and the pro¬
duct s really good. It does just what it says it will and
more besides. Grateful users from all over the world
keep writing in discovering new uses and old users are
as loyal to it as Harold Tompkins, the fiance, is to Skull
and Bones or Stanley Baldwinis to Harrow. Thereare
no suicides when money’s made that way and every¬
one sleeps soundly on the yacht Akira III, master Jon
Jacobson, crew offourteen, owner and familyaboard.

P ier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht
with two of the three hundred and twenty-four

234

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

Esthoxdans who are sailing around in different parts
of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long
and sending back articles to the Esthonian news¬
papers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia
and bring their authors between a dollar and a
dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the
place occupied by the baseball or football news in
American newspapers and are run under the
heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-
run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete
without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-
headed Esthonians who are waiting for a cheque
from their last article. When it comes they will sail
to another yacht basin and write another saga.
They are happy too. Almost as happy as the people
on the Alzira IIL It’s great to be an Intrepid Voyager.

On the Irydia IV> a professional son-in-law of the
very rich and his mistress, named Dorothy, the
wife of that highly paid Hollywood director, John
Hollis, whose brain is in the process of outlasting his
liver so that he will end up calling himself a
communist, to save his soul, his other organs being
too corroded to attempt to save them, are in bed.
The son-in-law, big-framed, good looking in a
poster way, lies on his back snoring, but Dorothy
Hollis, the director’s wife, is awake and she puts on
a dressing-gown and, going out on to the deck,
looks across the dark water of the yacht basin to the
line the breakwater makes. It is cool on the deck
and the wind blows her hair and she smooths it

235

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

back from her tanned forehead, and pulling the
robe tighter around her, her nipples rising in the
cold, notices the lights of a boat coming along the
outside of the breakwater. She watches them moving
steadily and rapidly along and then at the entrance
to the basin the boat’s searchlight is switched on and
comes across the water in a sweep that blinds her as
it passes, picking up the coast-guard pier where it lit
up the group of men waiting there and the shining
black of the new ambulance from the funeral home
which also doubles at funerals as a hearse.

I suppose it would be better to take some luminol
Dorothy thought. I must get some sleep. Poor
Eddy s tight as a tick. It means so much to him
and he’s so nice, but he gets so tight he goes right
off to sleep. He’s so sweet. Of course if I married
him he d be off with someone else, I suppose. He is
sweet, though. Poor darling, he’s so tight. I hope
he won’t feel miserable in the morning. I must go
and set this wave and get some sleep. It looks like
the devil. I do want to look lovely for him. He is
sweet. I wish I’d brought a maid. I couldn’t
though. Not even Bates. I wonder how poor John
is. Oh, he’s sweet too. I hope he’s better. His poor
liver. I wish I were there to look after him. I might
go and get some sleep so I won’t look a fright to¬
morrow. Eddie is sweet. So’s John and his poor liver.
Oh, his poor liver. Eddie is sweet. I wish he hadn’t
gotten so tight. He’s so big and jolly and marvellous
and all. Perhaps he won’t get so tight to-morrow.

236

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

She went below and found her way to her cabin,
and sitting before the mirror commenced brushing
her hair a hundred strokes. She smiled at herself in
the mirror as the long bristled brush swept through
her lovely hair. Eddie is sweet. Yes, he is. I wish
he hadn’t gotten so tight. Men all have something
that way. Look at John’s liver. Of course you can’t
look at it. It must look dreadful really. I’m glad
you can’t see it. Nothing about a man’s really ugly
though. It’s funny how they think it is though.
I suppose a liver though. Or kidneys. Kidneys en
brochette. How many kidneys are there? There’s
two of nearly everything except stomach and heart.
And brain of course. There. That’s a hundred strokes.
I love to brush my hair. It’s almost the only thing you
do that’s good for you that’s fun. I mean by yourself.
Oh, Eddie is sweet. Suppose I just went in there.
No, he is too tight. Poor boy. I’ll take the luminol.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She was
extraordinarily pretty, with a small, very fine
figure. Oh, I’ll do, she thought. Some of it isn’t
as good as some of the rest of it, but I’ll do for a
while yet. You do have to have sleep though.
I love to sleep. I wish I could get just one good
natural real sleep the way we slept when we were
kids. I suppose that’s the thing about growing up
and marrying and having children and then drink¬
ing too much and then doing all the things you
shouldn’t. If you could sleep well I don’t think
any of it would be bad for you. Except drinking

237

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

too much I suppose. Poor John and his liver and
Eddie. Eddie is darling, anyway. He is cute. I’d
better take the luminol.

She made a face at herself in the glass.

‘You’d better take the luminol,’ she said in a
whisper. She took the luminol with a glass of water
from the chromium-plated thermos carafe that was
on the locker by the bed.

It makes you nervous, she thought. But you have
to sleep. I wonder how Eddie would be if we were
married. He would be running around with some
one younger I suppose. I suppose they can’t help
the way they’re built any more than we can. I just
want a lot of it and I feel so line, and being someone
else or someone new doesn’t really mean a thing.
It’s just it itself, and you would love them always if
they gave it to you. The same one I mean. But
they aren’t built that way. They want someone
new, or someone younger, or someone that they
shouldn’t have, or someone that looks like gome-
one else. Or if you’re dark they want a blonde.
Or if you’re blonde they go for a redhead. Or if
you re a redhead then it’s something else. A Jewish
girl I guess, and if they’ve had really enough they
want Chinese or what do you call thems or goodness
knows what. I don’t know. Or they just get
tired, I suppose. You can’t blame them if that’s
toe way they are and I can’t help it John has
drunk so much he isn’t any good. He was good.
He was marvellous. He was. He really was. And

238

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

Eddie is. But now he’s tight. I suppose Ill end up
a bitch. Maybe I’m one now. I suppose you never
know when you get to be one. Only her best friends
would tell her. You don’t read it in Mr. WinchelL
That would be a good new thing for him to
announce., Bitch-hood. Mrs. John Hollis canined
into town from the coast. Better than babies.
More common I guess. But women have a bad time
really. The better you treat a man and the more
you show him you love him the quicker he gets
tired of you. I suppose the good ones are made to
have a lot of wives but it’s awfully wearing trying
to be a lot of wives yourself, and then someone
simple takes him when he’s tired of that. I suppose
we all end up as bitches but whose fault is it?
The bitches have the most fun but you have to be
awfully stupid really to be a good one. Like Helene
Bradley. Stupid and well-intentioned and really
selfish to be a good one. Probably I’m one already.
They say ydu can’t tell and that you always think
you’re not. There must be men who don’t get tired
of you or of it. There must be. But who has them?
The ones we know are all brought up wrong.
Let’s not go into that now. No, not into that.
Nor back to all those cars and all those dances.
I wish that luminol would work. Damn Eddie,
really. He shouldn’t have really gotten so tight. It
isn’t fair, really. No one can help the way they’re
built but getting tight has nothing to do with that.
I suppose I am a bitch all right, but if I lie here now

239

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

ail night and can’t sleep I’ll go crazy and if I take
too much of that damned stuff I’ll feel awful all day
to-morrow and then sometimes it won’t put you to
sleep and anyway I’ll be cross and nervous and feel
frightful. Oh, well, I might as well. I hate to but
what can you do? What can you do but go ahead
and do it even though, even though, even anyway,
oh, he is sweet, no he isn’t, I’m sweet, yes you are’
you’re lovely, oh, you’re so lovely, yes, lovely, and
I didn’t want to, but I am, now I am really, he is
sweet, no he’s not, he’s not even here, I’m here,
I’m always here and I’m the one that cannot go
away, no, never. You sweet one. You lovely.
Yes you are. You lovely, lovely, lovely. Oh, yesj
lovely. And you’re me. So that’s it. So that’s the
way it is. So what about it always now and over
now. All over now. All right. I don’t care. What
difference does it make? It isn’t wrong if I don’t
feel badly. And I don’t. I just feel sleepy now and
if I wake I’ll do it again before I’m really awake.

She went to sleep then, remembering, just before
she was finally asleep, to turn on her side so that her
face did not rest on the pillow. She remembered, no
matter how sleepy, how terribly bad it is for the face
to sleep that way, resting on the pillow.

There were two other yachts in the harbour but
everyone was asleep on them, too, when the coast¬
guard boat towed Freddy Wallace’s boat, the
Queen Conch, into the dark yacht basin and tied up
alongside the coast-guard pier.

240

CHAPTER XVII

Harry Morgan knew nothing about it when they
handed a stretcher down from the pier, and* with
two men holding it on the deck of the grey-painted
cutter under a floodlight outside the captain’s cabin,
two others picked him up from the captain’s bunk
and moved unsteadily out to ease him on to the
stretcher. He had been unconscious since the early
evening and his big body sagged the canvas of the
stretcher deeply as the four men lifted it up toward
the pier.

‘Up with it now.’

c Hold his legs. Don’t let him slip. 5
‘Up with it.’

' They got the stretcher on to the pier.

‘How is he, Doctor? 5 asked the sheriff as the men
shoved the stretcher into the ambulance.

‘He’s alive, 5 said the doctor. ‘That’s all you can
say. 5

‘He’s been out of his head or unconscious ever
since we picked him up, 5 the boatswain’s mate
commanding the coast-guard cutter said. He was
a short chunky man with glasses that shone in the
"floodlight. /He needed a shave. ‘All your Cuban
stiffs are back in the launch. We left everything
like it was. We didn’t touch anything. We just
put the two.down that might have gone overboard.

Q, 241

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Everything’s just like it was. The money and thf»
guns. Everything.’

Come on,’ said the sheriff. ‘Can you run a floor!
light back there?’

‘I’ll have them plug one in on the dock,’ the
dockmaster said. He went off to get the light and
the cord.

Come on, said the sheriff. They went astern with
flashlights. ‘I want you to show me exactly how
you found them. Where’s the money?’

‘In those two bags.’

‘How much is there?’

T don’t know. I opened one up and saw it was
the money and shut it up. I didn’t want to touch it ’
‘That’s right,’ said the sheriff. ‘That’s exactly
right.’ 1

Everything’s just like it was except we put two
of the stiffs off the tanks down into the cockpit so
they wouldn’t roll overboard, and we carried that
big ox of a Harry aboard and put him in my bunk.
I figured him to pass out before we got him in.
He’s in a hell of a shape.’

‘He’s been unconscious all the time?’

‘He was out of his head at first,’ said the skipper.
But you couldn’t make out what he was saying.
We listened to a lot of it but it didn’t make sense.
Then he got unconscious. There’s your layout.
Just like it was only that ndggery looking one on his
side is laying where Harry lay. He was on the
bench over the starboard tank hanging over the

242 ■

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

coaming and the other dark one by the side of him
was on the other bench, the port side, hunched over
on his face. Watch out. Don’t light any matches.
She’s full of gas.’

‘There ought to be another body,’ said the
sheriff.

‘That’s all there was. The money’s in those bags.
The guns are right where they were.’

‘We better have somebody from the bank to see
the money opened,’ said the sheriff.

‘O.K.,’ said the skipper. ‘That’s a good idea.’

‘We can take the bags to my office and seal it.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said the skipper.

Under the floodlight the green and white of the
launch had a freshly shiny look. This came from
the dew on her deck and on the top of the house.
The splinterings showed fresh through her white
paint. Astern of her the water was a clear green
under the light and there were small fish about the
pilings.

In the cockpit the inflated faces of the dead men
were shiny under the light, lacquered brown where
the blood had dried. There were empty *45 calibre
shells in the cockpit around the dead and the
Thompson gun lay in the stern where Harry had
put it down. The two leather briefcases the men
had brought the money aboard in leaned against
one of the gas tanks.

/ ‘I thought maybe I ought to take the money on
board while we were towing her,’ the skipper said.

243

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

‘Then I thought it was better to leave it just exactly
like it was so long as the weather was light.’ J

‘It was right to leave it,’ the sheriff said. ‘What’s
become of the other man, Albert Tracy, the fisher¬
man?’

‘I don’t know. This is just how it was except for
shifting those two,’ the skipper said. ‘They’re all
shot to pieces except that one there under the wheel
laying on his back. He’s just shot in the back of the
head. It came out through the front. You can see
what it did.’

‘He’s the one that looked like a kid,’ the sheriff
said.

‘He don’t look like anything now,’ the skipper said.

‘That big one there is the one had the sub¬
machine gun and who killed attorney Robert
Simmons,’ the sheriff said. ‘What do you suppose
happened? How the devil did they all get shot?’

‘They must have got fighting among themselves,’
the skipper said. ‘They must have had a dispute
on how to split the money.’

‘We’ll cover them up until morning,’ the sheriff
said. ‘I’ll take those bags.’

Then, as they were standing there in the cockpit,
a woman came running up the pier past the coast¬
guard cutter, and behind her came the crowd.
The woman was gaunt, middle-aged and bare¬
headed, and her stringy hair had come undone
^nd was down on her neck although it was still
knotted at the end. As she saw the bodies in the

244

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

cockpit she commenced to scream. She stood on the
pier screaming with her head back while two other
women held her arms. The crowd, which had come
close behind her, formed around her, jostled close,
looking down at the launch.

‘God damn it/ said the sheriff. ‘Who left that
gate open? Get something to cover those bodies;
blankets, sheets, anything, and well get this crowd
out of here. 5

The woman stopped screaming and looked down
into the launch, then put back her head and
screamed again.

‘Where they got him? 5 said one of the women near
her.

‘Where they put Albert? 5

The woman who was screaming stopped it and
looked in the launch again.

‘He ain’t there, 5 she said. ‘Hey, you, Roger
Johnson, 5 she shouted at the sheriff. ‘Where’s
Albert? Where’s Albert? 5

‘He isn’t on board, Mrs. Tracy, 5 the sheriff said.
The woman put her head back and screamed again,
the chords in her scrawny throat rigid, her hands
clenched, her hair shaking.

In the back of the crowd people were shoving
and elbowing to get on to the dock side.

‘Come on. Let somebody else see. 5 ■

‘They’re going to cover them up. 5

And in Spanish, ‘Let me pass. Let me look. Hay
cuatro mwrtos. Todos son muertos. Let me see. 5

245

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Now the woman was screaming, ‘Albert! Alberti
Oh, my God, where’s Albert?’ Mrt v

In the back of the crowd two young Cubans who
had just come up and who could not penetrate the
crowd stepped back, then ran and shoved forward
together The front line of the crowd swayed and
bulged, then, m the middle of a scream, Mrs. Tracy
and her two supporters toppled, hung slanted
forward m desperate unbalance and then, while he
supporters wi dly hung to safety, Mrs. Tracy shl
screaming, fell into the green water, the scream
becoming a splash and bubble.

Two coast-guard men dived into the clear green

Tight W tZ C f rS 'J? Cy T SpJashin S in thc flood-

shoved a h bJrT ff , leanCd ? Ut ° n the stern and
froTt? b 1 h °u k ° Ut t0 her > and finall y 5 raised
k Vt 0W by , the , tw ° ooast-guardsmen; pulled
up by the arms by the sheriff, she was hoisted on to
the stem of the launch. No one in the crowd had
made a move to aid her, and, as she stood dripping

££ T* Sh ^T ked V P at them > shook both P he?
as she Sr/" d Sh T ted> <Basards! Kshes!’ Then

cockpit she wailed ’ <Alber -

taWnn°I hi b ri d ’ MrS ‘ Tracy ’’ the sheriff said,

Sh? Mr, T b an m° put arOUnd her - <Tr r to be
calm, Mrs. Tracy. Try to be brave.’

teeth J teeth ’’ Said MrS - Tracy tra gically. ‘Losht my

We 11 dive them up m the morning,’ the skipper of
.. 246 •

HARRY MORGAN —WINTER

the coast-guard cutter told her. ‘We’ll get them all
right.’

The coast-guard men had climbed up on the
stern and were standing dripping. ‘Come on. Let’s
go,’ one of them said. ‘I’m getting cold.’

‘Are you all right, Mrs. Tracy?’ the sheriff said,
putting the blanket around her.

‘All rie?’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘All rie?’ then clenched
both her hands and put her head back to really
scream. Mrs. Tracy’s grief was greater than she
could bear.

The crowd listened to her and was silent and
respectful. Mrs. Tracy provided just the sound
effect that was needed to go with the sight of the
dead bandits that were now being covered with
coast-guard blankets by the sheriff and one of the
deputies, thus veiling the greatest sight the town had
seen since the Isleno had been lynched, years
before, out on the County Road and then hung up to
swing from a telephone pole in the lights of all the
cars that had come out to see it.

The crowd was disappointed when the bodies
were covered but they alone of all the town had
seen them. They had seen Mrs. Tracy fall into the
water and they had, before they came in, seen
Harry Morgan carried on a stretcher into the
Marine Hospital. When the sheriff ordered them
out of the yacht basin they went quietly and
happily. They knew how privileged they had
been.

247

one of the girls

‘I’m praying for
sat there, biting

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Meanwhile at the Marine Hospital Harrv
Morgan’s wife, Marie, and her three daughters
waited on a bench in the receiving room. The three
girls were crying and Marie was biting on a hand-

noon ief ShC hadn t bCCn ablC 10 Cry sinCC about
‘Daddy’s shot in the stomach
said to her sister.

‘It’s terrible,’ said the sister.

Be quiet,’ said the elder sister,
him. Don’t interrupt me.’

Marie said nothing and only slu ui
on a handkerchief and on her lower lip.

After a while the doctor came out. She looked at
mm and he shook his head.

‘Can I go in?’ she asked.

‘Not yet,’ he said. She went over to him. ‘Is he
gone?’ she said.

^1 m afraid so, Mrs. Morgan.’

‘Can I go in and see him?’

Not yet. He’s in the operating room.’

Oh, Christ,’ said Marie. ‘Oh, Christ. I’ll take
the girls home. Then I’ll be back.’

Her throat suddenly was swollen hard and shut

so she could, not swallow*

, ,; C0m f,° n ’ you S irIs >’ she sa id- The three girls
followed her out to the old car where she got into
the driver s seat and started the engine.

^How s Daddy?* one of the girls asked.

Marie did not answer.

248

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

‘How’s Daddy, Mother?’

‘Don’t talk to me,’ Marie said. ‘Just don’t talk
to me.’

‘But . .

‘Shut up, Honey,’ said Marie. ‘Just shut up and
pray for him.’ The girls began to cry again.

‘Damn it,’ said Marie. ‘Don’t cry like that. I said
pray for him.’

‘We will,’ said one of the girls. T haven’t stopped
since we were at the hospital.’

As they turned on to the worn white coral of the
Rocky Road the headlight of the car showed a man
walking unsteadily along ahead of them.

‘Some poor rummy,’ thought Marie. ‘Some poor
goddamned rummy.’

They passed the man, who had blood on his face,
and who kept on unsteadily in the dark after the
lights of the car had gone on up the street. It was
Richard Gordon on his way home.

At the door of the house Marie stopped the car.

‘Go to bed, you girls,’she said. ‘Go on up to bed.’

‘But what about Daddy?’ one of the girls asked.

‘Don’t you talk to me,’ Marie said. ‘For Christ
sake, please don’t speak to me.’

She turned the car in' the road and started back
toward the hospital.:

Back at the hospital Marie Morgan climbed the
steps in a rush. The doctor met her on the porch

249

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

as he came out through the screen door. He w*
tired and on his way home. Was

£ He’s gone, Mrs. Morgan,’ he said
He’s dead?’

He died on the tahle.’

‘Can I see him?’

,, t ^ lc doctor sa ^- ‘He went very peacefully
Mrs. Morgan. He was in no pain.’ ^

Oh, hell/ said Marie. Tears began to run down
her cheeks. Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, oh, oh.’

The doctor put his hand on her shoulder

see him!’ ^ Ma " C SakL Thcn * <][ waa t to

‘Come on,’ the doctor said. He walked with her
down a corridor and into the white room where

bis r Je^ 0 bod a v T1 ° n * whcelcd tabie » a sheet over
no fSl b dy ^ The hght Was VC1 T bri gbt and cast

ttr rS t L; s « h ^ g n h e t stood in ,hc d °°™y '«**

at a11 ’ Mrs - MorRan -’
said^ Marie did not seem to hear him.

W« < &£dM£. beg “ “

CHAPTER XVIII

I don’t know, Marie Morgan was thinking, sitting
at the dining-room table, I can take it just a day
at a time and a night at a time, and maybe it gets
different. It’s, the goddamned nights. If I cared
about those girls it would be different. But I don’t
care about those girls. I’ve got to do something
about them though. I’ve got to get started on some¬
thing. Maybe you get over being dead inside.
I guess it .don’t make any difference. I got to start
to do something anyway. It’s been a week to-day.
I’m afraid if I think about him on purpose I’ll get
so I can’t remember how he looks. That was when
I got that awful panic when I couldn’t remember
his face. I got to get started doing something no
matter how I feel. If he’d have left some money
or if there’d been rewards it would have been better
but I wouldn’t feel no better. First thing ■' I’ve got
to do is to try to sell the house. The bastards that
shot him. Oh, the dirty bastards. That’s the only
feeling I got. Hate and a hollow feeling. I’m empty
like a empty house. Well, I got to start to do some¬
thing. I should have gone to the funeral. But I
couldn’t go. I got to start to do something now
though. Ain’t nobody going to come back any more
when they’re dead.

Him, like he was, snotty and strong and quick*
251

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

and like some kind of expensive animal. It W01]If1
always got me just to wuteh him mow. I 2 J
lucky all that time to have him. His luck wont
bad first m Cuba. Then it kept righ worsoT]
worse until a Cuban killed him. and

Cubans are bad hick for Conr.hs Pnhnns

Sit;? fo ; anyb,,dy ' Th<y *»

? 3; °°- 1 r m< ; mb( ' r th:it f ™<- be took me L

mdZT WhC n C WaS makhlf ? such good money

ST

lathed s „ i

Ihat was the first time I ever made mv hair
blonde that time there in tin. » “ air

Prado. ^55 o b r,iIi&“

i nd andT w r U ? n V?,? A ^ ****£%*

tellinEthct '°° k ttrrible ’ but I kept

52 5? L ‘ f tlu * “ uWn ’‘ malc “ “ M'

oSie 5? tb ?. ma V wo '‘W go over it with that

it kfhaTh? ? 1? 7? COtton 0,1 ^ cnd . di PPing

li the i 2 d ?' S ' Uffin il sort “ f
'CTT? d steamed sort of, and the combi

S td ali " ,d 0f ,he “■'<* and th

22 ^ZlZl^n 4 U * b ?“ dry and 1

was having dte a? ah IM “ y ChcS * of what 1
can', make i,Tl' t “‘li s L e r Say ^ jm * “* if >“
And finally he said, that’s just as light as I can
25 a

HARRY MORGAN—WINTER

make it safely, Madame, and then he shampooed it,
and put a wave in, and I was afraid to look even
for fear it would be terrible, and he waved it parted
on one side and high behind my ears with little
tight curls in back, and it still wet I couldn’t tell
how it looked except it looked all changed and I
looked strange to myself. And he put a net over it
wet- and put me under the dryer and all the time
I was scared about it. And that when I come out
from under the dryer he took the net off and the
pins out and combed it out and it was just like
gold.

And I came out of the place and saw myself in
the mirror and it shone so in the sun and was so soft
and silky when I put my hand and touched it, and I
couldn’t believe it was me and I was so excited I was
choked with it.

I walked down the Prado to the cafe where
Harry was waiting and I was so excited feeling all
funny inside, sort of faint like, and he stood up
when he saw me coming and he couldn’t take his
eyes off me and his voice was thick and funny when
he said, ‘Jesus, Marie, you’re beautiful’.

‘And I said, “You like me blonde?” ’

‘Don’t talk about it,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the
hotel.’

And I said, ‘O.K., then. Let’s go.’ I was twenty-
six then.

And that’s how he always was with me and
that’s the way I always was about him. He said

=53

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

he never had anything like me and I know there
wasn’t any men like him. I know it too damned well
and now he’s dead.

Now I got to get started on something. I know
I got to. But when you got a man like that and
some lousy Cuban shoots him you can’t just start
right out; because everything inside of you is gone.

I don’t know what to do. It ain’t like when he was
away on trips. Then he was always coming back
but now I got to go on the rest of my life. And I’m
big now and ugly and old and he ain’t here to tell
me that I ain’t. I’d have to hire a man to do it now
I guess and then I wouldn’t want him. So that’s
the way it goes. That’s the way it goes all right.

And he was so goddamned good to me and
reliable too, and he always made money some way
and I never had to worry about money, only about
him, and now that’s all gone.

It ain’t what happens to the one gets killed. I
wouldn’t mind if it was me got killed. With Harry
at the end there he was just tired, the doctor said.
He never woke up even. I was glad he died easy
because Jesus Christ he must have suffered in that
boat. I wonder if he thought about me or what he
thought about. I guess like that you don’t think
about anybody. I guess it must have hurt too bad.
But finally he was just too tired. I wish to Christ it
was me was dead. But that ain’t any good to wish.
Nothing is any good to wish.

I couldn’t go to the funeral. But people don’t
254

HARRY MORGAN-WINTER

understand that. They don’t know how you feel.
Because good men are scarce. They just don’t have

them. Nobody knows the way you feel, because
they don’t know what it’s all about that way.
I know. I know too well. And if I live now twenty
years what am I going to do? Nobody’s going to
tell me that and there ain’t nothing now but take
it every day, the way it comes and just get started
doing something right away. That’s what I got to
do. But Jesus Christ, what do you do at nights is
what I want to know.

How do you get through nights if you can’t sleep?
I guess you find out like you find out how it feels to
lose your husband. I guess you find out all right.
I guess you find out everything in this goddamned
life. I guess you do all right. I guess I’m probably
finding out right now. You just go dead inside and
everything is easy. You just get dead like most
people are most of the time. I guess that’s how it is
all right. I guess that’s just about what happens
to you. Well, I’ve got a good start. I’ve got a good
start if that’s what you have to do. I guess that’s
what you have to do all right. I guess that’s it.
I guess that’s what it comes to. All right. I got a
good start then. I’m way ahead of everybody now.

Outside it was a lovely, cool, sub-tropical winter

day and the palm branches were sawing in the light
north wind. Some winter people rode by the house
on bicycles. They were laughing. In the big yard

255

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

of the house across the street a peacock squawked.

Through the window you could see the sea looking
hard and new and blue in the winter light.

A large white yacht was coming into the harbour
and seven miles out on the horizon you could see a
tanker, small and neat in profile against the blue
sea, hugging the reef as she made to the westward to
keep from wasting fuel against the stream.